


Love Me Now

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (Alongside Plot/Character Development), (Love Shortly Thereafter), Boys Learning To Communicate Healthily, Bucky Joins the Avengers, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Domestic Fluff, Happy Ending, Impressively Well-Adjusted Bucky Barnes, Lust at First Sight, M/M, Modern Veteran!Bucky Barnes, Primarily a Head-Over-Heels-in-Love Story, Schmoop, Seriously: So Much Love, Shrunkyclunks, Slice of Life, Steve Rogers (Finally) Goes to Therapy, Steve Rogers Feels, True Love, With a Side of Existential Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29159556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: A few years out of the ice, now, and Steve’s adjusting to the modern world. He likes Thai food. He hates discrimination and inequality and also the subway at rush hour. He’s learned to live his life, generally, and is fairly content with what he expects tomorrow will bring.He does not, by any means, expect James Buchanan Barnes.Because James Buchanan Barnes is an Army Major sitting in Tony’s lab for a fitting of a Stark prosthetics prototype, and he is the most beautiful man, no: the most beautiful human being Steve has ever seen. And suddenly, Steve has to square with falling in love, hard and fast and all-consuming, with a person who fits into Steve’s life, who curls around Steve’s soul like he was made for it, and who might break Steve’s heart without ever meaning to, just because he’s a normal, precious, mortal man—and the serum quite likely made Steve something else.Or: Steve Rogers never thought he’d live past 25. Now, he has to make peace with quite possibly living a hell of a lot longer, and losing the love of his life in the process.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 306
Kudos: 305





	1. feels like spring

**Author's Note:**

> Initially, this was going to be for the (Not) Another Stucky Big Bang (whose mods are the most lovely and understanding of people); but 2020 at large generally happened for and our team decided if we all couldn’t comfortably and joyfully create for the deadline, we were happy to wait until everything could go up together.
> 
> So: that’s what we’re doing now. Updates are scheduled every 2-3 days, so approximately 3 times a week.
> 
> I have been so very lucky to work with two impossibly talented artists for this fic: [espressosaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espressosaur) and [mikku](https://twitter.com/mma_mookie?s=21), who are also incredibly lovely people. Thank you both, so very very much, for coming on this journey with me.
> 
> As always, my unending gratitude and love to my beta, cheerleader, and hand-holder, [weepingnaiad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad), who convinced me more than once not to delete this story entirely. 
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmCFY1oYDeM): which to be fair—over the course of many many miles driven with this song popping up on shuffle a lot—also bears credit for the concept, too.

So here’s the thing: 

Steve’s just coming off a casual, impromptu run-in with Vincent in the elevator, who just so happens to be Nat’s current compromise set-up-prospect from Marketing: he has an eyebrow piercing rather than a lip ring ( _aesthetic, Steve, not something you have to learn to swap spit around_ ), which Steve can appreciate in theory—he’s an artist, he gets _aesthetics_ —and objectively Vincent’s an attractive enough man, slender, good cheekbones. Nice ass.

Objectively.

But the fact is Steve hasn’t been looking for anything like that in a very long time. Maybe not ever. He doesn’t believe in soulmates, despite what he shared with Peggy. She’d been there when there’d been no one, at a time when the world was changing; when _his_ world was changing something fierce and he didn’t know which way was up, and through all of it she was a constant, red lips and keen eyes and ready to take whatever came. Steve admired her, Steve was attracted to her on every possible level, and Steve was a maybe more than a little enraptured by her, but they’d had what Peggy had called, one day in her bed in DC, a snowdrop love, and the artist’s soul in Steve had latched onto that idea: something pure, and fledgling, and beautiful—full of possibility, held close to the chest to keep from harm for how fragile it was in the new dawn.

Steve’s not sure he agrees with her so far as she takes it from there—to insist that he deserves the full bouquet of spring through autumn, the rapture and impossible joy of it all that she’d had the privilege, the blessing of knowing, and that he’s meant to know, too, now that time’s been given him to find it.

Steve’s not sure he agrees that he deserves anything like that, but he loves that she knew what he was feeling more than he knows any words to say as much, and it’s true: he doesn’t believe in soulmates, and hell if he’s looking for what he maybe does believe in—love, even half a bouquet, he’d take that. And it’s not even just the fact that he can’t think of love, the real thing, without knowing that winter would always come and the leaves would always die in the ice and wondering whether he might just blossom onward, onward, onward _without_ , and he doesn’t think he can do that. He’s big enough to admit that to himself, and he’s small enough to know that if he can’t say it to Peggy, she sees through him like glass anyway but still: it’s not just that.

It’s more that he’s still trying to find his way in this brave new millennium, and that’s difficult enough as it is; there’s no sense in adding to the struggle. Steve may like a fight more than is objectively healthy, but they didn’t praise his tactical prowess for nothing: one front at a time, when there’s only one man in the fray. 

Which brings him here: objectively knowing that one, Vincent’s a very attractive man who seems very kind; two, he’s not looking for bouquets, half or whole or otherwise; and three, he really does need to find some way to discourage Natasha in her absolutely unwavering pitch to set him up with _someone_.

This is how Steve finds himself at Stark Tower, in Tony’s 73rd floor lab, on that particular day, at that particular moment, too lost in his thoughts to see danger when it’s lurking, when he should turn tail and run.

In hindsight, they may have _over_ -praised that tactical prowess of his.

“You had your eyes on me for ages, Stark,” a voice echoes through the room, and it’s sweet and smooth like honey, or a midnight summer storm, and it quenches something in Steve that’s been aching, throbbing in every beat of his goddamn blood for tending and holding and sating, that’s been crying out forever, maybe, or else as long as he knows to remember anymore: it stops everything in him, takes a hand and makes a fist around the heart in his chest, fucking _dangerous_ —

It sounds like Brooklyn, and hot rain, and sugared-up coffee when sugar was scarce: and somehow Steve knows that’s not the only reason for it resonating in his bones along the same octave as _home_.

“’Bout damn time you made an honest gentleman outta me.”

“Correction,” Tony snips immediately, though he never looks up; it’s then that Steve realizes that the man who owns the voice made solely out of _home_ , lying reclined in an oddly—given the trademark madness of any lab of Tony’s—luxurious seat before him has a cybernetic implant from the shoulder, moulded down about three inches, and Tony’s poking around the insides of what Steve would guess is the rest of the arm from the size, the shape, the intricate plates and the deft-looking fingertips at the end, elegant somehow even cast in metal. 

“The _colonel_ had his eye on you for ages. He’s shy though, you gotta push him before he makes his move.” Tony, being Tony, infuses those words with every ounce of innuendo they can hold.

Typical. 

“You can come in Capsicle,” Tony calls over his shoulder, and Steve wasn’t hiding, exactly, but it startles him nonetheless. “There’s no one _important_ you’d be distracting me from, here.”

The man on the chaise doesn’t even dignify the barb with a response. Interesting.

“Do you know,” the man picks up instead, and Steve gets a good look at him now: broad, with muscle definition that could rival Steve’s own but more lithe, compact for speed where Steve’s all about bulk. He’s got a jawline to envy, and stubble to fantasize about, if Steve’s going to be honest in his own head—and he tries to be. Sam, who he’s admittedly only known a short while now but trusts like he’s known him forever; Sam suggests that’s the most important step, learning not to lie so much to yourself, but yeah. Stubble splayed out to the cheekbones, which are deadly in themselves on the kind of face Steve wants to study and learn to draw from memory, for all its angles and curves, the dip above full lips and eyes a color that Steve knows he’ll think on until he finds the right name, the right shade: storm clouds but just a little more blue, the kind of blue that wouldn’t be there if the clouds were quite that grey.

The man’s flipping his shoulder-length hair from his face as he talks, says words that Steve’s not following because oh: apparently he has a thing for hair that long. Steve knew he had a little bit of a thing for _hair_ , yeah, but—well, the dive in his stomach is unexpected.

Words. Right. It’s polite to follow words when there’s a man in front of him whom he’s never met, doesn’t even have a name to match with, who’s having what appears to be a fairly significant medical procedure and hasn’t bothered to kick him out.

Words. Following those. Yes.

“I was fucking terrified of Rhodey, like, piss-my-pants terrified of him,” this gorgeous brunet is going on, gesturing enough with his right hand to make up for the immobility of his missing left. “And I’d been deployed five years by the time I actually stood in a room with him.”

Tony snorts, and looks all kinds of giddy, no doubt plotting how to best confess this to Rhodey in its entirety for the maximum effect of embarrassment. 

“Laugh all you want, Stark, he already knows this story,” the man rolls his eyes, shutting Tony down with an ease Steve finds himself impressed by, and a grin Steve finds his knees going a little weak for.

“You know, I don’t think I’m ever going to understand how you do that kid-in-a-candy-shop and shit-eating-grin look all at once? But it’s kind of my favorite thing in the world when I get to wipe it straight off that adorable face of yours. _Honeybun_.”

Tony’s eyes narrow—and is that a flush on his cheeks? Oh, yes. Steve’s very impressed.

Possibly aroused. Both. Probably both.

Well shit.

“Oh, yes. See,” and the man turns those storm-cloud—storm clouds reflected in water, seasides, those undertones of cobalt that flash just a little; maybe that, _maybe_ —the man turns his eyes to Steve and grins easily, and Steve has the strange, uncanny feeling of familiarity, camaraderie, like he’s somehow known that smile, deep down, for his entire life.

Not-so-deep-down, Steve's pulse ratchets up a notch. 

“That’s how I _stopped_ being scared shitless by the Big Bad Colonel,” the man winks, then looks very deliberately at Tony, who’s just a little _too_ focused on the wiring in front of him. “First time I _was_ in a room with him, back when he wanted to recruit me for his ‘I'm-a-part-time-Avenger-and-Tony-Stark's-Bestie-So-I-Get-What-I-Want’ special ops team,” and Tony looks goddamn betrayed, all open-mouth and wide-eyes and the man smirks damn near licentiously, apparently without even trying, and Steve has to breath deeply so as not to pop a stiffy because fuck if it’s not sexy as hell.

“Well, I was sent in to speak with him too early. He was on a call. Glares at me, and then tries to beg off,” the man looks back toward Steve then, tossing his head as he shrugs.

“And I mean, I were him? I’da hung up, because I’m big bad Colonel James Rhodes, right? But he doesn’t.”

And oh: oh, but the man grins, and it’s broad and true and sly and not at all familiar because if Steve had known something that bright, anywhere inside him, before this moment? He’d never have made it in the ice, because he’d have never known what it felt like to be cold.

Jesus fucking _Christ_.

“And that’s when I start to realize, he’s glaring, but like,” the smile’s gone, now, but the scrunch of those features in its wake is among the most adorable things Steve’s ever seen; “not at me? Even though I’m the only one there?”

Tony’s working _very_ hard on the very _same_ wires, it seems. He’s maybe pouting, but he’s doing a very good job of angling his face away so that it’s impossible to tell for sure.

Steve fights a snort.

“And I’m quiet as a fuckin’ church mouse,” the man continues, regaling his audience of one, and Steve wonders what he’s done to merit the honor, or whether it’s an honor at all, whether the man is just charismatic like that, a natural raconteur. “So I start to hear the tone, at least, from the other end. And it’s common knowledge that the Colonel and this asshole here are bosom-buddies. So the party on the other end? I could put two and two together.”

And those lips look soft, look smooth and plush and when they smirk it’s this perfect curve, this impossible expressive ellipse that Steve wants to trace with his fingers and memorize; wants to trace with his tongue—

“But the _thing_ that _really_ made me stop being afraid of Rhodey, at all, ever, even a little bit?” the man leans in, as if it’s a secret to be confessed: 

“Stark here makes him call him ‘honeybun’ before they end a phone call.” 

And Tony snaps a metal plate into place with a particularly echoing force just then, and turns, and yep: pouting. Because Tony’s absolutely the type of man who’d be pissy that he didn’t get to use a story like this to nag his long-suffering, beloved _never say the words Iron Patriot in front of me ever again, you traitor_ work-husband. But he’s also fighting a grin, Steve can see it in his eyes, because Tony is also the type of man who gets joy in _hearing_ such stories, even when he _doesn’t_ get to own them and reap their rewards to the fullest.

“I mean,” the man with the smile and the eyes and the lips is winking in Tony’s direction, an inside joke that Steve finds he desperately wants to be a part of, or better: to have one of his own. Which is fucking absurd, and he needs to get a goddamn grip, but—

“Who can be afraid of a big squishy teddy bear with a _honeybun_ waiting for him at home?”

And Tony laughs, and that smile is back on the other man’s face, and Steve feels absurd, yeah.

But it’s the nicest thing he’s felt in far too long; longer than he thinks he can remember clearly, even when he tries.

“And that, Major,” Tony says, lifting the limb he’d been toying with in both hands; “is why I love you.”

The man—a Major, whose arm is presumably being lofted in Tony’s grasp—snorts without restraint. 

“You love my armless ass so you can tinker with your crazy engineering genius _in vivo_ on a willing participant.”

“Love is multifaceted, Barnes,” Tony doesn’t bother to deny it; “has to be if it’s built to last.”

“I’m going to guess,” the Major tilts his head, considering. “Self-help book?”

“No—”

“Read by JARVIS.”

Tony’s silent. 

JARVIS, on the other hand, is not.

“Excellent deduction, Major Barnes.”

The Major— _Barnes_ —grins, self-satisfied. It’s a good look on him.

“Thank you kindly, J,” he tells the room around them before turning back to Tony. “How are things going with Pepper, anyway?”

And it’s not like Steve doesn’t know Pepper, or about Tony _and_ Pepper, or has never had a conversation about them, together, _being_ together, but this feels...not his speed. Not his place.

His pulse has gone beyond ratcheting up to thrumming almost painfully, and this is fucking ridiculous.

He’d duck out quietly if he thought they’d let him; in lieu of the opportunity, however, he excuses himself before Tony can divulge personal details that Steve just, well.

Steve’s not here for that.

Steve honestly doesn’t quite remember _why_ he’s here at all, anymore.

“I’ll come back later,” he says, turning away.

“Why?” Tony asks, genuinely curious. “Take a seat, Cap.” He nods toward a worn-looking couch next to Major Barnes.

“You’re more than welcome,” Barnes nods, smiling just a little: welcoming. Steve’s entire body tingles. “Tony says the stupidest shit when he’s messing with this thing,” the smile broadens as he nods to the metal arm. “It’s awesome.”

Tony rolls his eyes, but gets back to work, and the Major reaches out his hand to Steve, and Steve thinks he should think twice before taking it—he has the overwhelming desire to _touch_ too badly, too fully for this to be a good idea.

But his Ma raised him right. And Steve hasn’t _wanted_ in so very _long_.

“James,” Steve catches the words, as his hand slips into Major Barnes’, and is gripped hard: Steve hopes it doesn’t give away his pulse at the wrist. “But call me Bucky.”

And Steve has the strangest sensation of hearing a woman’s voice in his head, long repeated and without context until just this moment: _just because you aren’t looking for it, Steve, doesn’t mean it can’t come find you anyway._

It sounds like Peggy, and Steve sits against his conscious will, and shakes James-call-me-Bucky’s hand and thinks he might never forget the way that the heat of it feels like spring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/hitlikehammers) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> -
> 
> Chapter One art by [espressosaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espressosaur).


	2. something too pervasive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Steve thinks on the moments, mere moments and nothing more, that turned into dreams—every night, every fucking night, brighter and bolder and leaving him breathless upon waking, at the least, hot and hard and gasping and not at all like the ice, not even a little; and that face, that mouth, the curves of that body that Steve’s guessed from under clothing to match the bare chest he’d tried so hard to memorize without being obvious, without staring openly in that one time, that _single time_ that’s taken hold of Steve’s every thought—
> 
> And she asks if it’s a _friend_ he’s drawing, sketching in facets and fantasies like he would a lover.
> 
> Fuck _all_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update small in length, but SO IMMENSE IN THE ART MADE FOR IT, I just cannot. [Espressosaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espressosaur) is too talented. This art needed a whole chapter, nothing else to distract. That's the only reason I have for the size of this chapter, but also: the only reason anyone could need.

There’s a cafe Steve went to once. Before.

Once, and then the sky opened and the world changed, and the sweet young woman who brought him coffee _once_ and asked if he was watching for _Tony fucking Stark_ of all people to zoom by on his way in or out of his scar-on-the-skyline now takes to serving him a drink on the house every single time he comes.

He should have _stopped_ frequenting said cafe a long time ago, as a result of this, but he likes the location, and he likes the way it’s situated just a little bit obscurely, not smack-dab in the middle of prying eyes, and well.

They make a really, _really_ good cup o’ joe.

“You really don’t have to keep _thanking_ me, you know,” Steve says as he starts to pack up his things and gets some cash from his wallet, because even if Beth, his favorite waitress, refuses to give him a bill—and he likewise refuses to get more than a coffee as a result—she can’t stop him from leaving a generous tip.

She rolls her eyes; he doesn’t stop by all the time, but when he does, they’ve made this dance a routine, and Steve’s good at those.

Routines, if not dancing.

“Whatcha got there?” she asks before Steve can get his leather portfolio into his bag. He normally comes with his phone, or a book at most—more often, he just watches people, and stares off in the sheer attempt to empty his mind of everything that could possibly weigh him down or lift him up, seeking out a peace that’s too much like the moments, maybe dreams, he has of the ice to be considered healthy.

But it’s what he’s looking for, most of the time he comes here, so there it is.

This time, though. _This time_.

“Oh wow, are you drawing again?” Beth asks it kindly, idly, or maybe not because yeah, he’s memorable because of what he is, more than _who_ he is but it was just the one time he’d been sketching at the tiny table, staring at the sky. And not that she’d know if he went home every night and sketched—even if the truth was he’d stopped bringing his sketchbook _anywhere_ after the Battle, even out of his bedside table in the evenings, alone in his apartment. But she asks, and the truth is it’s been more than a year since he got his charcoal pencils out and felt the texture of the paper under his touch, whorls pressing opposite to those on his fingertips as he shades tenderly, sketching aimlessly, thoughtlessly, the same goddamn thing.

He thinks he’s been here for minutes, that might have been hours. He’s filled half the book with the same subject.

The same, singular subject, rendered again and again and again.

“You’re really good,” Beth glances at a loose page before he has a chance to stuff it away; Steve doesn’t know what to make of the way his usual reticence to share his work shifts suddenly toward the edge of something too close to a protective rage for his liking, or comfort. 

“He looks so real,” she adds, and Steve thinks, unbidden: _if only_. “And really easy on the eyes, too.” Beth grins. “A friend of yours?”

And Steve thinks on the moments, mere moments and nothing more, that turned into dreams—every night, every fucking night, brighter and bolder and leaving him breathless upon waking, at the least, hot and hard and gasping and not at all like the ice, not even a little; and that face, that mouth, the curves of that body that Steve’s guessed from under clothing to match the bare chest he’d tried so hard to memorize without being obvious, without staring openly in that one time, that _single time_ that’s taken hold of Steve’s every thought—

And she asks if it’s a _friend_ he’s drawing, sketching in facets and fantasies like he would a lover.

Fuck _all_.

“Nah,” he shrugs, and forces a tiny grin. Not her fault that he’s crushing like a schoolboy; that he’s out of his mind with something too pervasive to just be called lust, but with nothing deeper to grasp to it can’t be more than that—

It _can’t_ be.

“I just thought, you know, with the arm,” she shakes her own arm out, and yeah: Steve had very lovingly rendered the plates of the metal arm, working backwards from what he’d seen Tony doing, how he’d watched it being fitted and removed and fitted again—filling in the gaps as best he could with his knowledge more of anatomy than the tech itself, but still. 

“Very hero-like, seemed like the kind of person you’d hang out with,” Beth grins, and then her eyes get wide.

“Are you doing a comic book?” she asks excitedly. “That’d be so cool, you know. Publish under a penname or something and be doubly famous,” and then she tilts her head.

“I don’t even read comics,” she tells him, her grin curling into a knowing smirk: “but I’d read something with _that_ guy.”

Steve feels a flush, but the heat of it’s starting in the center of his chest—a flush, nothing more, nothing _more_ —and what he says is “Have a good day, Beth,” as he takes his leave.

What he _thinks_ is more along the lines of _dear lord, so would I_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> -
> 
> Chapter Two art by [espressosaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espressosaur).


	3. emphasis not description

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Offering to buy me a drink from an open bar?” 
> 
> And Steve feels the flush start to build up his neck, pushed by the blood beating there like a battering ram: stupid, god, how _stupid_ —
> 
> “Jesus, Captain,” and it jars Steve enough to stave off the blush of embarrassment somewhere near his chin, because Steve thinks it might be the first time he’s heard his rank said without any weight or expectation, without duty in it, just something that’s his: less than his name and more than a stranger’s _sir_ —he’s not sure what to do with it, to be honest, but he’s sure as hell less sure what to do with what the next words, and the cheeky fucking _wink_ that comes with them, do to his pulse:
> 
> “I don’t put out ‘til the third date, no matter _how_ much you romance me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other reason the last chapter was so short, largely to highlight the art? Would be to make sure I didn't overwhelm anyone with the BEAUTY of TWO pieces in one chapter. Because once again, I am speechless at the art this collaboration has absolutely _blessed_ this story with; [mma_mmokie](https://twitter.com/mma_mookie) has created such soft, ethereal art for this story, I just. Yeah. 
> 
> Speechless, as I mentioned.

Contrary to some opinions—Tony’s opinion, it’s really only Tony’s opinion— _I don’t think so, not my thing_ is not “dinosaur-speak” for _absolutely, I’ll be there with bells on_.

Because Steve hates the Stark Industries galas. It’s selfish, and he knows it, and it makes him feel that uneasy stir in his stomach for even _thinking_ it, but he always ends up feeling infinitely exposed, touted about like arm candy or a particularly large and awkward trophy. The suits they send him to wear always fit immaculately and yet make him feel like he’s naked, and at the same time floundering in something too big, something made to cover up all that he _really_ is, instead of this paragon they’ve made him out to be. 

It’d be different if the free bar had _anything_ in it that took the edge off; but yeah.

And it was one thing when he could justify the exercise, and his immense discomfort with them, by saying they were working toward a good cause; raising money for the people who needed it from the only kinds of people who had enough to spare that it’d make a difference. It’s how he managed during the war, before they put him on the front lines: bonds and bullets and your best guy’s gun, and all that.

But, thing is: Tony’s got plenty of money. _Steve’s_ got plenty of money. These events are, admittedly, about neither of them ever having to be the person who pays for _everything_ , because that’s no kind of long term strategy at all, but, but—

In the end, how he feels _is_ flat out selfish, yes, and that’s why he _does_ show up when he doesn’t have a valid excuse otherwise. But for all that Steve makes sure he puts on his show-face, his reassuring posture, his polite smile and all the trappings?

Steve dreams of the Alps every time he leaves one of these penguin-suit events, and feels cold, and he won’t sleep again for days after. Sometimes longer. Because being here, on display—no matter how many times he runs numbers and tries to calculate the donation-equivalent of a polite nod or a smile or just a bit of smalltalk—being here, on fucking parade, _still_ , makes him feel—

“Like a trained fuckin’ monkey.”

Two things go through Steve’s mind, when the voice registers from just over his shoulder. One, the question of when the _hell_ people started to be able to sneak up on him, because no one can sneak up on him, not anymore. Natasha, sure, sometimes. Clint’s almost managed it; _almost_. But the way he nearly startles, almost jumps, here? This is _ridiculous_ — 

And two: he’s heard that voice once. _Once_. One time, one encounter, one conversation that wasn’t really a conversation because Steve didn’t say much at all, not unless it was a response or a smirk, a nod or a chuckle or something equally inane because that voice pervaded, that voice was larger than life because it was so full _of_ life that Steve was fit to choke on it, drown in it for how much he wanted to soak it up and really _feel_ that much of the heat of simply _living_ , for the first time in too goddamn _long_ —

“Hello,” and oh. 

Oh, when Steve turns and meets the owner of that voice, and looks into the face he’s been sketching like a lovesick teenager with a crush, save that he never sketched any one of the people he carried a torch for back in those days, and his heart had tripped plenty for reasons unrelated to any one of those unsketched impossibilities—but now.

Now, Steve’s pulse is heavy and heady and all out of sync, and he thinks that, were this man also a supersoldier, or maybe just looking at the right angle at the right time? He’d hear it, or he’d see it, spelled clear at the side of his throat.

“You looked kinda spaced-out over here.” James—no, no, he said call him Bucky, and that’s dangerously intimate for Steve’s head, yes, he’s been avoiding it rather deliberately for that very reason, but _Steve_ wasn’t the one to come over and take a seat, was he, and that’s gotta be promising, right, that’s gotta mean something, maybe?— _Bucky_ is smiling in a way he hadn’t the last time: not with humor but with softness, a little bit of the slyness from before but playful, now. Less a performance and more an invitation and if Steve were sure, if he were _sure_ that invitation was being extended to him, specifically, and not just to the world at large?

God, but he’d jump on it.

“Didn’t hear any of that, did’ya?” Bucky’s lips quirk just a little higher as he swings into a seat next to Steve’s, and the impulse to stroke the corners of that mouth with his fingertips, with his tongue—

 _Jesus_.

Steve takes as inconspicuous of a steadying breath as he can manage before he quirks a brow to match those lips best he can—and it’s so easy; it’s so _easy_ to stretch innocence over his features and ask, sweet as pie, just to see what he gets in reply:

“Trained monkeys?”

“Trained _fucking_ monkeys,” Bucky repeats, props his left elbow on the table and leans in, onto the palm. “For emphasis, not description.”

Steve breaks, and snorts, and hell.

Holy hell, but he _wants_ , and he’s not even sure what it is _that_ he wants.

But he’s sure as anything that he does. Want.

Desperately.

“I mean,” Bucky clears his throat and leans back in the chair; making himself comfortable more than just physically for the way that he lounges, but also, Steve thinks, around whatever he’s going to say. 

“Don’t think I’m not grateful,” Bucky starts, eyes wide and honest; “I am, god knows, and if I can do this for every moment of the rest of my sorry-ass life, waking _and_ sleeping, and it helps anyone else who…” 

He trails off, clenching metal fingers before drumming them, both unconscious and demonstrative at once, the arm on display with full intention, apparently, the sleek plates suddenly keenly comparable to the itchy cotton of Steve’s first ill-fitted pull-on mask: and yet their shine pales in comparison to the gleam of resolve that sharpens Bucky’s features, so much so that Steve almost has to look away.

Except, that’s a lie. 

He couldn’t look away if he tried.

“If it helps, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I _will_ do it.”

Bucky lets out a slow breath, held captive through his teeth and almost whistling, and it’s oddly endearing, particularly when it’s matched with the return of that smirk, and the playful tilt of the head that shakes a few pieces of soft-looking hair just enough to make Steve’s fingers itch with the long-dormant desire to just reach, to just _touch_.

“But I’m no saint, and I ain’t above complaining about it anyway.”

Steve grins, and the feeling is dizzying, for the way he didn’t know he was missing it so much: the feeling of being understood, even just a little.

The soft, tenuous brush of _maybe not alone_.

“I’m gonna get a drink,” Steve stands, because he needs to breathe, he needs to, to—something. “Can I get you anything?”

Bucky raises his brow, and it’s a fucking sensuous thing, that single motion. Whether it means to be or not.

“Offering to buy me a drink from an open bar?” 

And Steve feels the flush start to build up his neck, pushed by the blood beating there like a battering ram: stupid, god, how _stupid_ —

“Jesus, Captain,” and it jars Steve enough to stave off the blush of embarrassment somewhere near his chin, because Steve thinks it might be the first time he’s heard his rank said without any weight or expectation, without duty in it, just something that’s his: less than his name and more than a stranger’s _sir_ —he’s not sure what to do with it, to be honest, but he’s sure as hell less sure what to do with what the next words, and the cheeky fucking _wink_ that comes with them, do to his pulse:

“I don’t put out ‘til the third date, no matter _how_ much you romance me.”

Steve’s heart leaps, and he’s thrown for a second. Bucky sees it, and latches onto it; throws his head back and laughs.

Oh, wow. _Wow_ , that _laugh_.

“Jerk,” Steve manages to say around the way his own lips stretch wide with that infectious joy.

“Whatever you’re having,” Bucky nods behind him toward the bar, and Steve doesn’t know at all what he’s going to have. He hadn’t planned that far.

“Be right back,” he says anyway, because if there’s one thing he’s good at? It’s going in without a plan and figuring it out along the way.

“I’ll be right here,” Bucky’s smile shifts back to a smirk.

“Steve.”

Bucky blinks; tilts his head with a question.

“Call me Steve,” Steve clarifies. He wants that familiarity, he wants it to grow between them, and—

And he wants to hear it. He wants to hear his own name off that tongue, with the lingering tendrils of that laughter, wants it to thrill down his spine like he knows, like he _knows_ that it will.

“I’ll be right here, then,” Bucky looks at him, big storm-sky eyes on him like he’s the only thing in the room; the only thing in the world before his mouth shapes the word: 

“Steve.”

And yep. It shivers through his veins in a way that lights and sparks and sings: just a name.

Just _his_ name.

Steve can’t get to the bar fast enough, mostly so he can get back to that voice, that smirk, those eyes.

His _name_.

________________________________________

He’s started sketching again, yeah. Specific subjects— _subject_ , really—obviously, but still. He is sketching again.

Which is why what he does next makes him all the more...something. He doesn’t even think he has a word for how he feels about what he does next: crazy, pathetic, inspired, foolish, giddy, impossibly young. A sap before he’s earned the right. Soft where it means trusting in something he’s barely seen, and faith was never his strong suit in the pews, or hell: even in the foxholes. He’d always tried, but this. 

This is something else.

Word or no word, though: what he does is goes home, and between kicking off his dress shoes and untying his tie, he’s made the decision. He sits down on his sofa and flips open the laptop he rarely uses before he’s out of his clothes, and he’s looking up the email address before he can think twice, and then he’s drafting a very pointed question to the curator of the boxes upon boxes of his pre-war and USO-time possessions that went into archives and museums and collections and whatever else, because while he didn’t take much back and he doesn’t keep track of where much of the rest even is, he _does_ know who keeps his sketchbooks, all of the art that survived.

And so it’s past midnight and into a brand new day when he presses _send_ , asking for one specific book that he can still feel the shape of in his hands, the whisper of a wind only he can hear with his enhanced senses on the Front, still a chorus boy more than a Captain and weighed down with it: heavy. And he feels like he’s vibrating with some impossible, invisible energy for the rest of the night until he gets a reply by open-of-business the next morning, surprisingly helpful about it, promising a courier will get the item to him by end-of-day.

He can’t focus on a goddamn thing until the package is in his hands.

And then he’s calling a home number that no one ever answers, and that’s why he’s calling, because when no one ever answers?

The calls always go to the same place.

“Stark Industries, consumer feedback line.”

Steve really does need to ask if that ever works for people who get the number accidentally. If it’s even _possible_ to get the number accidentally and actually get through, at which point, Steve really needs to ask why there’s a default trick-message in the first place.

Irrelevant. 

“JARVIS,” Steve knows he will feel guilty for forgoing a proper greeting, but he’s alight with that unnamable- _something_ , still, and there’s a layer of his consciousness, very deep down, that might be a little afraid that he’ll think twice, think _better_ of all this if he hesitates, if he lets the momentum die. 

“If I asked you for an address, would Tony necessarily know about it?”

“Not unless I explicitly informed him, Captain.”

“Would you be able to, y’know,” Steve clears his throat, and he feels the vibrating, thick and strong around the bob of his Adam’s apple, all-consuming and driving his words before he can fully think them through; “ _not_ explicitly inform him?” Steve frowns to himself. 

“Or, probably not implicitly, either?”

Steve will never entirely get used to the incredibly human inflections that JARVIS uses, with full contextualization and knowledge. The 21st century: it’s a fucking doozy.

“Sir had quite a fond relationship with tequila when he was originally programming me, Captain. I’m not entirely sure he recalls how much autonomous judgement he left at my disposal in terms of discretion.”

There’s a pause where a chuckle would be with anyone else; with JARVIS, though, the laughter is just a suggestion in his tone. 

“I’ve sometimes suspected my inclination toward it was a subconscious effort on his part to balance his own disregard for it entirely.”

And that’s where Steve takes the suggestion and actually does laugh, until JARVIS prompts him back to the point:

“The address, Captain Rogers?”

Steve exhales heavily, and figures: now or never.

He wonders, not for the first time, how in the hell it was that he was never this nervous about things, never this consumed with that dagger-edge of fear when he was ninety pounds and couldn’t see over a tall counter—damn it all.

“Major James Barnes,” Steve says, voice steady if not particularly strong. “Please.”

He hopes, idly, that the _please_ makes up for his lack of pleasantries when he’d initially answered the phone. He blames the Catholic guilt—he didn’t need to wait for the 21st century to dawn to pick _that_ one up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> -
> 
> Chapter Three art by [mma_mmokie](https://twitter.com/mma_mookie).


	4. not a statement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re a punk, Rogers.”
> 
> He’s lucky, because there are benches everywhere, and that voice makes his knees go out: just like that.
> 
> “Sometimes,” Steve agrees without thinking, and Bucky—who’s _called_ him, who Steve had wrestled with himself for all of three seconds before adding him as a contact when JARVIS has offered his number alongside his address, and then felt guilty about it but not nearly guilty enough to delete it; Bucky, who’s called _him_ , who maybe niggled Tony or asked JARVIS, too, for _Steve’s_ number, because he _wanted_ it, wanted…
> 
>  _Bucky_ , who called him, huffs a laugh before silence falls, and all Steve can hear is the thump of his own heart and Bucky’s breath across the line.

Steve needs to get better at screening his calls. Or at the very least, looking at the caller ID before he slides to answer. 

This is not news. The sheer number of times he’s answered Tony’s calls when Tony’s actually calling—which means it’s not an emergency, because then it’s JARVIS calling, and if Tony’s calling he’s a) bored or b) looking to be funny, which means he’s going to be a dick. And don’t even get Steve _started_ on all of Natasha’s calls that he should have let go to voicemail. 

But mostly, Steve thinks, he should look at the name on the screen first because at least then, this time, he’d have been prepared: he doesn’t get a greeting, just words, and he’s walking through the park after a run and he’s really lucky that’s where he is, honestly, because there are benches everywhere.

“You’re a punk, Rogers.”

He’s lucky, because there are benches everywhere, and that voice makes his knees go out: just like that.

“Sometimes,” Steve agrees without thinking, and Bucky—who’s _called_ him, who Steve had wrestled with himself for all of three seconds before adding him as a contact when JARVIS has offered his number alongside his address, and then felt guilty about it but not nearly guilty enough to delete it; Bucky, who’s called _him_ , who maybe niggled Tony or asked JARVIS, too, for _Steve’s_ number, because he _wanted_ it, wanted…

 _Bucky_ , who called him, huffs a laugh before silence falls, and all Steve can hear is the thump of his own heart and Bucky’s breath across the line.

“You’re really fucking talented, you know that?” Bucky says, voice low and soft, so sincere and tight with something thick and significant that Steve doesn’t want to make too much of, exactly, except that he kind of fell onto a fucking park bench and, in truth, he _really_ wants to make a lot of it, and be right about it, too. 

“You can see the shading on the individual little hairs, on the,” Bucky pauses; “are they hairs? Or fur? On a monkey?”

And Steve has to swallow the amount of laughter that wants to rise and tumble from his lips, because that’s the best response—the _best_ one.

“I have no idea,” Steve confesses, and hopes that Bucky can hear how much his heart is in the words, hopes he hears at least a hint of the bubbling joy that’s caught in his throat. 

“Whatever,” Bucky says, and it’s lighter for a second before his voice gets full and quiet again, in a way that vibrates across the line and shakes in Steve’s bones: “You’ve got a gift.”

Steve feels his face get hot, and he’s not sure what makes him respond at all, really, or say anything more than thanks. But he feels like he should; like he _can_.

“I loved it,” Steve murmurs, like a secret. “Drawing. It was,” he lets out a deep breath: “it always felt right.”

“I feel like saying thank you for something like this,” Bucky tells him softly; “doesn’t quite cut it.”

Steve’s breathless, suddenly, like everything is soft, and slow, and warm, and it’s not just his knees that are weak, it’s everything, and for the first time he can ever recall that’s oddly okay. 

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Then your register for what qualifies as gratitude must be _way_ off,” Bucky tells him flatly, but then there’s an uptick in his tone that renders Steve powerless but to smile: “but we can work on that.”

Work on that; like they’ll have time and space—and _we_.

Steve likes the sound of that. A lot. 

“Let’s start with me saying thank you,” Bucky says, voice so warm. “Because Steve, this,” and his voice cuts off, and he clears his throat before he murmurs, so full that Steve can _feel_ it: “ _thank you_.”

“You’re,” Steve tries to meet that sweet, soft sensation that Bucky’s words send through him in waves: “you’re welcome. I wanted to,” Steve bites his lip.

“Y’know, after the gala. I guess I just knew you were the one who was supposed to have it.”

And that’s the truth. And the truth draws an audible inhale from Bucky that makes Steve’s skin prickle so pleasantly that he couldn’t stop the shiver running through him even if he’d tried.

“Jesus,” Bucky exhales, and god: that _sound_. “What are you doing Tuesday night.”

It’s a statement, not a question.

“I,” Steve swallows; “nothing planned?”

It’s a question, not a statement.

“Good,” Bucky says, satisfaction dripping from the word. “I figure you’re the kinda guy who _actually_ puts his _real_ information in his return address?”

Steve ducks his head because, well. Yeah.

“I mean, at least I didn’t put my name there, right?”

“Oh, at _least_ , sure. Yeah,” Bucky deadpans before he says simply: “Be ready at ten to eight.”

Steve finds himself smiling before he realizes it; only _can_ tell because it’s so wide it almost hurts. “Where am I going?”

“Hmm,” Bucky hums, playful enough that it tingles through Steve’s veins from wherever he is, to right here where Steve sits with his phone pressed too tight to his ear, like it makes a difference, like he can be _closer_ :

“Figure you’ve had enough of going to the future, yeah?” Bucky says, not a jab or a snark but a thoughtful musing that makes Steve wonder how no one has ever managed to say something like that to him—and they’re _always_ saying shit like that to him, one way or another—but he can’t figure out how no one has _ever_ managed to say it like that: simple, and kind, and perfect, even before Bucky finishes: 

“How about I say you’re going to the past?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)


	5. see for miles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He maybe watches the clock tick the seconds, only half the pace of his pulse, after he gets himself dressed and feels like he’s wearing something Nat wouldn’t berate him for, or worse, cackle uproariously at—maybe that’s what he does, or maybe he listens to the clock and his heartbeat as he stares out his window and waits for a car, or a person, or whatever’s coming for him, all nerves and promise and so much breathless anticipation that he doesn’t know what to do with, because Steve Rogers’ dating history isn’t the most robust, but it’s not _empty_ —and yet, Steve Rogers?
> 
> Steve Rogers has never had someone come to pick _him_ up for a date before.

Steve’s pretty lucky there are no world-threatening events between that phone call on Saturday and Tuesday night, because what he manages to do in the interim is basically all of nothing. Absolutely nothing. Unless you count more cool showers than he cares to admit to, and a constant simmer of nervous energy in his every motion, and if he lacked grace in his everyday, non-battle-related movements at large?

 _This_ is _ridiculous_.

Because Steve somehow manages to make his way through a brand new sketchbook—full of doodles and sketchings and little studies of fantasies that he could never bear for anyone to _ever_ see—over the course of a single, lost afternoon he doesn’t even remember passing by: and it’s a damned good thing that Steve’s somehow got money, now, because going through a whole sketchbook in a matter of hours, once upon a time, would have left him drawing on the damned walls for a month.

Then he manages to burn himself from the fingers to halfway up his forearm when he drops his fucking coffee because he’s daydreaming about folded hands that occupy a good fourth of the aforementioned sketches, flesh and metal entwined in the most fascinating contrast that’s all somehow still so _warm_ : and Steve maybe watches his skin heal over like it’s mesmerizing, not at all because he’s imagining a full, plush set of lips kissing it better, long lashes framing those perfect seaglass eyes watching him with every press of that mouth and—

Nope. That’s absolutely not what happens. At all.

Fuck, but Steve’s pathetic. He actually goes through the full-sketchbook to make sure he hasn’t descended into any little hearts with his initials, or Mr. Steve Rogers-Barnes written like a preteen girl, Jesus _Christ_.

He is actually relieved that there’s none of that on the pages. There is, however, a great deal of material that makes him curious as to the accuracy of whether or not that’s what Bucky looks like when the bottom half of him’s uncovered, given that Steve already saw him shirtless the first time they met, getting his arm tended to.

Steve’s real glad these sorts of drawings won’t get him thrown in jail in this century. _Real_ glad. He’d never risked it, then—maybe this is the dam bursting, or something.

Maybe that’s a reasonable explanation for some of these…yeah.

He maybe watches the clock tick the seconds, only half the pace of his pulse, after he gets himself dressed and feels like he’s wearing something Nat wouldn’t berate him for, or worse, cackle uproariously at—maybe that’s what he does, or maybe he listens to the clock and his heartbeat as he stares out his window and waits for a car, or a person, or whatever’s coming for him, all nerves and promise and so much breathless anticipation that he doesn’t know what to do with, because Steve Rogers’ dating history isn’t the most robust, but it’s not _empty_ —and yet, Steve Rogers?

Steve Rogers has never had someone come to pick _him_ up for a date before.

He’s staring so hard he almost misses the slowing of a sleek-as-hell car in front of his building. 

But he doesn’t miss it, and Steve doesn’t pause to think that maybe it’s not for _him_ , the car, no. 

No, he’s already down the stairs and out the door before that thought registers as a possibility. And by that point Bucky’s grinning at him through a rolled-down window and Steve feels goddamn _giddy_.

“Come on,” Bucky calls over to him. “In ya get.”

Steve doesn’t need to be told twice.

“This is nice,” he comments, about the car—definitely about the car, which is fantastic, and not about Bucky’s tousled hair and just-tight-enough button-down, and nope, Steve will not look down at Bucky’s lap while he’s driving, no, Steve’s got more self control than that.

Really.

“It better be,” Bucky scoffs, but runs his hand appreciatively over the leather of the steering wheel. “Admittedly, I wanted a ‘68 big-block, but I had to argue with Tony for _weeks_ just so I didn’t get some cocky special edition Audi,” Bucky shudders dramatically and pats the wheel again. 

“Gotta be grateful that this, at least, looks kind of like a car other people have.”

“How much did it cost?”

Bucky grimaces. “You really don’t want to know,” he shakes his head. “I wish I didn’t.”

Right. Steve can guess.

“I feel like I should ask, given that you seem to think that giving decades-old sketches from warzones out to random guys you met in Tony Stark’s lab is no big deal,” Bucky says as he sneaks through a stoplight; he’s watching the road, obviously, which is convenient enough because it sounds like he’d be averting his eyes anyway—and Steve’s generally figured out that when he most _wants_ to read someone’s eyes and see what they mean, and why, that’s when they’re most inclined to look away.

And Steve really wants to be able to read Bucky better than this angle allows. 

“You _do_ realize that sort of thing can be,” Bucky’s throat works around a swallow, and the way the streetlights play over his profile is nothing short of captivating: “it can be read into, you know?”

“I,” Steve doesn’t think he expected that; and he’s not sure he was aiming for this, exactly, when he sent that drawing to Bucky—not consciously, at least not with _that_ particular choice. But he sees it now, in retrospect. And well:

“Yeah,” Steve says plainly, because he’s not stupid enough to pretend he doesn’t want this thing that’s slowly revealing itself as something he might _possibly_ be able to have, to touch: here and now and right next to him. 

“Yeah, I do.”

“So you,” Bucky clears his throat again; “I mean...”

He trails off, and Steve’s trying to think of something to say just when Bucky reaches out and grabs his hand, and threads their fingers together on top of the gear-shift, and Bucky’s thumb’s stroking against his skin and shit.

 _Shit_ , but automatic transmissions are a _gift_ , and Steve’s grip in Bucky’s own tightens: this is a thing he wants to keep. 

“Okay,” Bucky breathes, his lips quirking in the softest smile that catches in the squeeze of Steve’s heartbeat: beautiful. “Okay, good.”

“Yeah,” Steve whispers, because it feels like the moment demands that light of a touch, precious and ephemeral: “good.”

They drive like that, hand in hand, for a few blocks, maybe more, before Bucky lets out a slow breath.

“Would it be over the top if I asked you to close your eyes?”

Steve isn’t expecting that, obviously, but he thinks on it for only a moment before the answer’s clear.

“Oddly enough?” he says, hands still tangled up in Bucky’s, just close enough to brush against the heavy pump at his pulsepoint. “No, it wouldn’t.”

“Would you say yes?”

Steve nods. “I think so.”

“Would you actually _do_ it?”

Steve turns and looks at Bucky, doesn’t answer until they hit a red light and Bucky can look back.

“If you wanted me to.”

Bucky’s lips part, and he’s stunning.

 _God_ , but he’s _stunning_.

“We’re nearly there,” he murmurs, cast in the crimson glow. “Close your eyes, Steve.” His fingers stroke Steve’s hand in his: “Please.”

Steve obeys. The space between them seems to shrink and the world fits inside the points of contact between their skin and Steve thinks he could feel every hitch of Bucky’s pumping blood, every rise and fall of breath if he could even possibly start to get past the deafening rush of his own.

“You can open your eyes now, if you want. We’re close enough.”

Time stood still, apparently, while Steve sat and held and knew only touch and his own heartbeat, and it kind of feels like that would be an okay way to live. If he could have no more than that, it would be okay.

“Nah,” Steve breathes; “that’d spoil the surprise.”

Deft fingers clench around his own: protective, maybe, but more…

More _grateful_ , almost. Like Steve’s a thing to relish and cherish and want.

Steve doesn’t know what to do with that, isn’t sure if he can trust in it.

“You’re unbelievable.” And it’s not frustration or agitation; it’s wonder in those words, and Steve shouldn’t have wavered.

He can trust in it all, and if it fails him later?

Right now, that’s a risk he’ll take.

They slow, and park, and Bucky squeezes Steve’s hand meaningfully before letting him go and turning off the ignition—Steve’s eyes flutter open and he knows exactly where he is.

“So. Welcome, or, almost,” he opens Steve’s door like a real gentleman, and Steve wouldn’t ever admit it out loud, but the butterflies in his stomach are truly something else when he takes Bucky’s theatrically offered hand. “Our keycard-access for the evening is on her way.”

Steve’s not sure he understands: an evening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a pretty damned romantic gesture, but Steve keeps an eye on their calendar, and they’re not open late. 

Except: keycard.

Keycard?

Bucky doesn’t lead him up the iconic stairs, no—they slip through a way Steve’s never gone toward, a door Steve’s never seen: an employee entrance that conveniently _doesn’t_ need a swipecard, apparently, as Bucky taps in a numeric code that’s far too long for anyone to manage guessing at it without getting caught. Steve feels daring and insubordinate and ready for a ruler against his knuckles and it’s intoxicating.

Plus Bucky’s hand’s still in his, and: well. 

They walk through the door and Bucky leads him down hall after hall, into an elevator and then down.

They’re going down for a while, and Steve thinks: no way.

No way in hell.

“Bucky, is this…” he starts to ask as the elevator doors open to a sparsely lit antechamber area where a keycard seems to be the _only_ way forward.

“Come on,” Bucky pulls him by the wrist and out of the elevator car before the door slides closed.

“So,” Bucky turns to him, rubbing his hands together almost nervously, smiling weakly like he’s not sure whatever he’s doing will be welcome—and if Steve thinks they’re doing what it looks like they’re doing, my _god_ : “I mean, I’m sure you coulda got in here on your own—”

“Nope.”

The word comes with a bright pop of lips on the ‘p’ and the appearance of a petite brunette out of nowhere, because Steve cannot tell where in the hell she could have come _from_ : no sign of doors or ways in or out, save the very obvious glass wall in front of them, guarded by the card-scanner.

“Come on, Becs,” Bucky volleys back; “ _Stark_ could’ve—”

“You think your big sister can’t turn down Pepper Potts?” the woman—Bucky’s sister, apparently, and actually the resemblance is striking now that Steve’s looking—raises a dangerous brow. “Repeatedly?”

Bucky stares her down for a long moment, and she stares back just as unwavering, before Bucky grins and tilts his head in concession:

“I stand corrected.”

The woman smirks, and then inclines her head to Steve; Bucky clears his throat and ducks his head a little sheepishly.

“Right, Becca, Steve,” he gestures between them. “Steve, this is Becs, my—”

“Beloved sister and secretly the favorite but don’t tell the others,” Becca finishes for him with a wry grin before adding a stage whisper: “they’re sensitive about that kind of thing.” 

She sticks out a hand toward Steve. “Pleasure.”

Steve says the same, while Bucky mutters ruefully: 

“More like pain in my—”

“Would you like me to escort you out, James?” Becca cuts him off, turning back to eye him carefully. “Need I remind you, I _could_ lose my job over this—”

“They’d be idiots to can you,” Bucky scoffs. “You’re like the best curator in the history of ever.”

“ _If_ anyone _ever_ found out.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to cross his arms and cock a brow _her_ way, and yeah. They’re siblings for sure. 

“Need I remind _you_ I was SpecOps for, oh, how many years? My clearance level—”

“You’re so lucky,” she interrupts, shaking her head and turning to address the rest of what she has toward Steve. “He is _so_ lucky he got his dumb ass captured. Has me going easy on him, all soft and shit.” 

She says it with more flippance than Steve can fathom for the subject, but Steve had noticed a certain resilience, a humor in the face of horror as a mechanism for moving forward shining clear that first day in Tony’s lab: maybe it’s a family trait. 

“Aww,” Bucky puts a hand to his chest dramatically: “she loves me.”

“Mmmhmm,” Becca rolls her eyes before turning to them both pointedly. “Right, gentlemen. This is like _The Da Vinci Code_ on steroids, but real and with rules and no Tom Hanks. Understand?” She eyes them until they both nod. “You’ve got two hours.”

“How ‘bout three hours?”

“How ‘bout I redirect your request to view our undisplayed masterworks to our storage warehouse in New Jersey?” Becca snarks back, clearly well-armed against Bucky’s charm where Steve absolutely isn’t, but Bucky doesn’t cave, and Steve thinks it’s only a sister who could stand against the force of those eyes because, god _damn_.

Becca frowns at Bucky for a good long time before sighing deeply.

“So fucking _soft_ on him, Jesus,” she shakes her head. “Three hours. Be _here_ , on the _dot_. Do _not_ make me come and track your ass down.”

“You’re the best, Becs,” Bucky grins wide, and Steve’s heart trips for it as he leans in to kiss his sister’s cheek. “Absolute _best_.”

“You owe me,” she says, then lowers her voice as if Steve can’t hear them—and granted, without his serum-enhanced hearing, he probably wouldn’t have. “This is storage at the _Met_ , Buck, you _owe_ me.”

Bucky nods knowingly. “It’s in the mail.”

Becca grins wide and hugs him from the side. “That’s why you’re my favorite brother.” 

“ _Only_ brother.”

Becca shoos him as she taps her card, the glass doors opening with a swoosh of the mechanisms: pressure locks for air and temperature control, and Steve cannot believe this, he cannot _believe_ this—

“Have fun, boys!” Becca says, blowing a kiss as she disappears from wherever she came from in the first place. Steve turns to Bucky, wide-eyed, kicking himself for the words about to come out of his mouth but his mother’s voice is in his ear and he can’t _not_ , no matter what it costs him. 

“Bucky,” he says, and he could not keep the wonder out of his voice even if he’d wanted to. “You, but, if she could get in trouble—”

“She’s exaggerating,” Bucky waves him off, leading him through the doors into the storage collection of the _Metropolitan Museum of Art, fucking hell_. “Plus she’s leaving for the Smithsonian in a month, so this is a small window of opportunity for any consequences to be basically bullshit. She signed a pretty ironclad contract.”

Then Bucky turns to him, takes both his hands now and smiles so wide it could be enough of a treat, a joy that they wouldn’t even need to bother walking any further, because that’s a masterpiece in motion, right there on Bucky’s face. 

“Besides,” he says wryly; “d’ya think you’re the only one who’s been jonesing to see this kind of shit for ages?”

And while Bucky’s beautiful enough on his own? Steve’s a kid in a candy shop with the promise of everything to take in, waiting before them, for three whole hours with Bucky’s fingers tangled in his.

________________________________________

Steve’s chest is tight for stretching, like his ribs are nothing against the fluttering of his pulse as Bucky walks him to his door, precisely three hours and a car-ride’s-length later.

“Bucky,” Steve turns to him, hands in his pockets because he feels like he’s going to vibrate apart with the way his blood’s straining at his veins. 

“I,” he shakes his head and takes one hand out to run through his hair, all nerves: “this was...” 

“Yeah,” Bucky exhales, and his smile is almost bashful, almost sly as he ducks his head for a second before looking up again and meeting Steve’s gaze head-on before Steve can escape the shiver of it, the shock of it dancing on his skin as he’d stared when Bucky wasn’t looking; as he stares still, because he can’t look away. 

“Yeah, it was.”

Steve swallows, hard, and the feeling running through him, pushing words from his mouth is—once again—one he doesn’t know a name for, but that doesn’t make it any less all-consuming, any less perfect and sweet on the tongue:

“ _Thank you_.”

Bucky’s grin widens.

“See?” He leans in to nudge Steve’s shoulder, and Steve only then realizes just how _close_ they are. “A thing worth gratitude. You’re learning already.”

And then Bucky’s grin dampens, gets smaller across his face, but somehow, bigger, so much bigger that it shines through Steve’s whole body when he says:

“You’re so very, _very_ welcome.”

And Steve’s had the world at his fingertips before—had it in his hands for the saving, for safekeeping, for whatever people thought he was capable of regardless of who and what he _really_ is and yet, in those words, Steve feels that world open and seem like a thing he might be able to touch one day, might have a shot at _knowing_ for the very first time.

“Can I kiss you goodnight?”

And then, the world that Steve felt open, felt like he could know? That world’s bottom falls out and his heart starts skipping again and Jesus _fuck_ , he can barely breathe.

He is so very far out of his depth, here. He can’t even see his depth, can’t sound it or understand where it goes.

Bucky doesn’t frown, exactly, when Steve’s stunned silence stretches, but there’s something like regret in his features that Steve wants nothing to do with, wants never to witness again when Bucky asks: “Is that a no?”

“No,” Steve rushes, stumbling over his words, his own breaths in the way but fuck all, _anything_ but _no_. “I mean, yes, it’s a yes, I just—” he shakes his head. 

“I’ve never been asked that before.”

Bucky’s almost-frown starts to curl upward, at that. Soft and gentle and more affectionate than Steve thinks he’s earned, just yet, or deserves. But dear god, does he _want_.

“Well then, I think it’s high time to rectify that oversight,” Bucky says softly, close enough that the words tickle Steve’s lips. “Though I don’t quite buy that you’ve never been asked for a kiss before,” Bucky eyes him through his lashes, and it burns embers in Steve’s blood, absolutely gorgeous. “You’re a goddamn catch.”

“Wasn’t always,” Steve breathes, heart pounding heavy in his neck as he watches Bucky lean closer, closer, closer—

“Now _that_ ,” Bucky tilts his head just a little; “I don’t believe for a second.”

And in retrospect, Steve thinks Bucky was aiming for Steve’s cheek. But Steve shivers, just a little, and leans, more than a lot, into the presence of Bucky, the feel of his exhale on Steve’s skin and so the chaste kiss intended for the line of Steve’s stubble ends up at the corner of Steve’s lips and lingers there with more intimacy, with more heat than Steve can fathom for such a simple touch, more of a tremble up Steve’s spine than he’s certain he can stand.

“Goodnight, Steve.” Bucky breathes it before he draws back, and so the drag of his lips is wet and plush against Steve’s skin and it’s impossible, it’s beautiful enough to break Steve’s heart between the pounding, and scatter what’s left.

“Goodnight,” Steve barely manages to breathe out, because he’s choked with something he can’t process or grasp, but he finds it in Bucky’s eyes when they both pull back, so at least it’s not just him.

Whatever this is, wherever this goes: he’s not alone.

He didn’t realize how long it’d been since he’d felt that, until it permeates the space between them, only half of the warmth of Bucky’s body but something beautiful still when Bucky whispers, before he walks backward toward the sidewalk, never once breaking eye contact:

“Sweet dreams.”

Steve doesn’t go inside until Bucky’s out of sight. And they’ve never quite measured it, not like this, but in this moment, for this reason: Steve?

Steve can see for _miles_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> -
> 
> Chapter Five art by [mma_mmokie](https://twitter.com/mma_mookie).


	6. break from pounding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s a pretty face like yours doing in a sorry place like this?”
> 
> First, it’s not a sorry place. If it was a sorry place, though, the presence of Bucky Barnes in the back corner would make it anything but.
> 
>  _Anything_ but.

Bucky probably shouldn’t have bothered wishing him sweet dreams. Those, Steve was never going to have a problem with.

Well, at least: not the _sweet_ part. Or the dreaming part. Both of those are more than taken care of.

What isn’t taken care of are his sheets, which he’s washing every morning because he’s apparently thirteen years old again, even though at the age of thirteen he never, _never_ had this many of _those_ kinds of dreams. Not even close.

At one point, his downstairs neighbor scolds him for leaving his sheets in the wash for two whole days, because she apparently saw them in the washer when she did her Monday loads as well as when she did her Wednesday loads and presumed he’d left them there.

Which, as a matter of fact, no. No, he had not. He’s pretty sure said sheets have faded already for the daily washing. Sometimes, twice daily.

The life of a “superhero” when there’s no life-saving to be done can be boring. Sometimes he naps. So sue him.

But it’s at the point that Mrs. Finnegan warns him off that Steve realizes he really, really, really needs to do _something_.

________________________________________

“What’s a pretty face like yours doing in a sorry place like this?”

First, it’s not a sorry place. If it was a sorry place, though, the presence of Bucky Barnes in the back corner would make it anything but.

 _Anything_ but.

However, it’s not a sorry place. It’s a gorgeous little jazz bar with live musicians setting up at just the perfect angle opposite where Bucky’s sitting, where Steve’s presumed he’s welcome enough to linger over the seat next to him and and settle with a drink he barely stopped to get because he wanted to get _here_ , not the bar, but right _here_ , where Bucky was, where Steve was impulsive enough to follow up on a comment made in response to a sculpture in the lowest of levels beneath the Met: _Reminds me of the way light plays on the pianist in this little music joint I go to sometimes, just the way this curve comes in_ and those hands had traced the shape of the statue in the air; _you should come, you’d love it, I think you’d, I mean, yeah, yeah I think you’d love it._

Steve swallows, and his heart’s been pounding since he decided to google _live music_ and _bar_ and Bucky’s address, while trying to judge the line between romantic and stalker and failing to find it—but then Bucky saw him, sees him, and the smile on his face is bright in the mood lighting, and Steve thinks, fuck the pianist’s shadows: that.

 _That_ , right there? Bucky is the perfection of that sculpture. Bucky is a goddamn work of art.

Steve breathes, and he thinks it’s a rum and coke that’s sweating in his hands as he tries to steady his world enough to reply.

“In the neighborhood,” Steve shrugs, or else, makes himself shrug; “felt like a drink.” He nods to Bucky’s empty beer.

“Need a refill?”

Bucky quirks a brow. “You gonna join me?”

Steve’s heart takes a break from pounding, and leaves a little room to skip, just a tiny bit hopeful.

“If that seat’s not taken,” Steve tries like hell to play it cool, but he’s pretty sure he misses the mark by a mile.

“Taken by you,” Bucky says, gesturing wide in invitation; “if you want it.”

Steve knows he offered to get Bucky another drink, but he mostly forgets to care when the opportunity to sit next to him’s offered. Bucky huffs a laugh, like maybe he sees that entire thought like a full and real thing to read off Steve’s body, and so he’s the one who gestures to the waitress passing nearby to ask for another.

Bucky turns to him, then, eyes solely focused on Steve in the dim light, catching the glow in unpredictable flashes, and Steve’s pulse decides that pounding and skipping are not, in fact, mutually exclusive.

“So,” Bucky says, entirely calm about eyeing Steve from just under his lashes, like they’ve been sitting here for hours, like they do this every week, and Steve realizes in that moment, more than he’d realized, that he wants that. He wants that _so much_. 

“Tell me about you.”

Steve chuckles dryly. “Everyone knows about me.”

“Bullshit.” Bucky doesn’t even blink, and huh.

That’s the right answer, somehow, that Steve didn’t even know before someone said it.

He’s really glad that someone is Bucky.

“What do you wanna know?” And Steve would tell him, he’d tell him anything. He’s certain, in that moment, of that fact above most others.

He’s probably more certain that, given the opening, he’d kiss Bucky Barnes senseless, but.

“Tell me about the first scar you ever got.”

Steve doesn’t expect that, but honestly, he should know better by this point to think that Bucky’s going to do anything Steve _could_ ever expect.

“Pretty sure it’s,” and Steve turns his arm to find it—it’s faint, and it was one of the curiosities from when he’d just had the serum, the fact that he can almost never scar now but the ones he’d already gotten stayed along for the ride, but he spots it and points it out, just at the crook of his elbow.

“This one,” he says, almost proud despite the _how_ of it. “Messing around the kitchen, got too close to the stove,” he smiles, less sadly than he might have another time, in another place, with another man by his side. “Ma was _furious_ , she’d told me to sit down about a hundred times.”

“You’re just as good now, then, I take it. At listening to sense.”

Steve feels himself flush, but still smirks. Bucky laughs.

Steve feels himself fall a little more, feels something grow a little bit warmer between his ribs.

“I’m bad at this game,” Steve says. “Can I,” he clears his throat; “will you answer the same things? After I do?”

And if Bucky’s grin does things to him; if Bucky’s laugh makes him melt?

“Sure thing, Stevie.”

That grin and that laugh and that voice around not just his name, but around _Stevie_ , a name Steve hasn’t heard in _decades_ , and has maybe never heard so goddamn _sweet_ —

Steve might just come undone, here, and he thinks that’d be okay, too.

“Busted it on a badly pitched baseball,” Bucky points to his right ring finger. “This here split open and bled like a motherfucker,” he draws one of his metal fingertips along a silvery line of scar tissue. “And I was stubborn and didn’t tell my mom until too late, so I didn’t get the stitches I should have.”

And Steve wonders, for the first time—and that’s kind of surprising, now that the idea is in his head; surprising that it’s the first time—what his life might have looked like had he grown up with Bucky Barnes. Would they have played ball when the weather was fine and Steve was healthy enough to manage, or gone to see the Dodgers together, with birthday money as a rare treat? 

Would they have—

“One memory from each year of school.” Bucky interrupts, and Steve tries not to spend too much of his time meandering in the past, comparing it to the now for better or for worse. “And a shot for whoever’s got the better story.”

Steve tries not to compare the then to the now, and frankly, he doesn’t want to be anywhere _but_ the now. Right here, and _right_ now.

“That’s probably not real fair,” Steve grins small, but it’s just a sliver of the joy that sparks along every inch of his skin when Bucky calls for tequila. “Alcohol doesn’t really touch me anymore.”

“Never really did, for me,” Bucky shrugs; “so maybe your advantage is less steep than you think,” and then he smirks, hard.

“You’re _also_ assuming you’ve got the better stories,” Bucky drawls the words a little, and damn but Steve didn’t realize his khakis were this tight. “Which is a tactical error, when you’ve got no proof. You might want to regroup and try again, or at least wait til you’ve heard _one_ , so you’ve got something to judge from.”

And then he winks. The bastard fucking winks, and grins wide, and yeah. Steve knows tight—the comments about his shirts have been clear enough, and frequent.

But if his fly strains any further, he’s gonna have a real problem.

Bucky smiles and thanks the server for their shots when they come and oh. Oh, Steve is well aware that tequila is a standard shot, but he wasn’t thinking. Hadn’t had a reason to, before.

But the salt and the limes: fucking hell.

He _definitely_ has a real problem, and they haven’t even gotten started.

________________________________________

Bucky wasn’t lying: neither about holding his liquor, or about having the better stories. And it’s not just because Steve has to think hard for a “good” one in a few of those years, having spent more of the school days in bed than in class—it’s mostly because Bucky has really fuckin’ absurd stories. Like the time in first grade when he forgot some weird class competition where everyone had to wear a particular color every Friday, and unwilling to accept costing his peers their winning streak, he collected everyone’s crayons in various shades of green, sat on them to help them melt until the teacher took roll for the contest, and then smeared wax all over his tee shirt and pretended it was tie-dye. Or when he got ticked that his class counselor wouldn’t put him into the trigonometry class he wanted, so he snuck in under one of the back tables that couldn’t be seen from the front and took notes on the floor until the teacher spotted him seven weeks into the semester and got him suspended because they simply couldn’t believe that someone hadn’t just sneaked their boyfriend in to get off under the desk.

 _Because god forbid a kid want to learn shit, I mean, honestly,_ Bucky’d said as Steve was still cackling at Bucky’s imitation of the teacher’s lecturing of his supposedly “depraved nature”. _Maybe the asshole should have been good enough at his job to notice the fugitive camping in the back of the room before the end of October. And come on, no self-respecting high-schooler wants to do anything in a math classroom. Not even me._

By the time they’re talking senior year, Steve feels pleasantly buzzed, and given that he knows the booze isn’t responsible for it, he’s pretty sure it has a hell of a lot more to do with Bucky. Bucky smiling, Bucky laughing, Bucky reacting to his story about staining his ma’s apron with a question about the apron’s pattern, and not some kind of awkward limbo between long-belated condolences for his long-dead mother, and over-eager desire to relate to a “time gone by”, like no one knows what a fucking apron is anymore. No, Bucky listened to him describe the flowers and the colors and that would have been enough on its own, really, but then Bucky’d lit up and banged open palms on the table with a childlike enthusiasm that melted Steve straight through—including the way Bucky’d jumped and gone wide-eyed at the clink of his metal hand against the edge of the tray of empty drinks still waiting for a refill—just before he’d told Steve that he was about 99.9% percent sure his grandmother had the same apron and that he was kind of known for hiding behind it as a little kid, and fuck, _fuck_ but Steve wants to kiss that almost-breathless nostalgia off his face and make him breathless for entirely different reasons.

So yeah. Steve’s pretty sure that the buzzed feeling is entirely about Bucky. And maybe specifically, also, a little about the dilation in Bucky’s eyes that Steve’s pretty sure isn’t all that much about the alcohol either, because it started when _Steve_ took the first shot—and honestly he didn’t quite know how to do the salt thing, just guessed and licked the space between his thumb and forefinger, and yep, those pupils got big, and maybe Steve had then played dumb with sticking his fingertips into his mouth, and then into the salt, and then sucking a little and yep, they got bigger—

So. The buzzing may have something to do with that, too.

“Favorite smell.”

Steve should probably think that’s weird, before he asks it—Bucky’d insisted Steve had to at least _try_ to ask the questions, after they’d given up on the shots past twelfth grade and moved on to one-offs—but it’s not. It’s not weird at all, actually, because he’s _buzzing_ and the music started ages ago and they’ve been here… hours maybe. Days? Minutes. Moments.

Bucky smiles, loose-limbed and gorgeous, and bites his bottom lip before he answers:

“How do you feel about pie?”

Steve pauses. “Good. Just, not apple.”

“Oh, fuck no,” Bucky says, scrunching his nose up. “Boring.” 

And Steve laughs, too hard and too loud but he’s sick and tired of people using apple-pie-related metaphors involving his person, to the point where it’s ruined the decent-if-not-stellar dessert for him in the process. 

“My grandma,” Bucky starts, and Steve’s just bit into one of the jalapeno poppers they ordered, so it’s muffled when he cuts in:

“The one wiff-tha apron?”

And Bucky chuckles, and the play of the light on his jawline’s like magic.

“The very same,” Bucky nods. “She used to make this black raspberry pie, now,” he lifts a finger, pointedly. “Don’t go mistaking black raspberries for black _berries_ , because they’re _not_ the same, yeah?”

Steve nods, entirely too serious and Bucky nods back, just as serious but clearly approving before breaking down laughing.

“The smell of it baking,” Bucky says through the laughter; “at the very end, while it’s still in the oven, like, when you just _open_ the oven, before you even touch it to bring it out. _That_ smell.”

Steve groans. “I don’t even have a sweet tooth, Barnes, but you’re killing me here.”

“ _Everyone_ has a sweet tooth,” Bucky counters with a secret little grin. “You just gotta know where it is, and what it’s sweet for.”

Steve runs hot, immediately, and almost unbearably, for all that isn’t said in those words, in that tiny smile.

“What about you?”

Steve takes a second before he processes the question.

Smell. Right.

He kinda wants to kiss Bucky, specifically right now, to pay attention to how _he_ smells. He thinks that would probably be his most honest answer.

“Probably,” Steve thinks for a second; “probably, wow, it’s really stupid—”

“Not possible.” And Steve basks for a moment in Bucky’s gaze, because it’s warm and fixed on him and only him where he’s propped his chin on hand just to watch, like Steve’s the best thing, or at least among the top, like, five things.

Yep. That’s the buzz, right there. Because it’s fucking _intoxicating_.

“Probably the smell after the rain?”

“Petrichor.”

Steve blinks.

“What?”

“The smell. S’called petrichor.”

“Right,” Steve nods to himself, like that word is what’s keeping his focus, processing it, when it’s really just Bucky. 

“Petrichor, then,” Steve decides. “And fresh-ground coffee.”

Bucky just smiles. But then, Steve’s not sure that smile can be called _just_ anything.

“Good choice.”

There’s a silence, somehow, that settles in what is objectively—Steve presumes—a rather loud jazz bar around them, quite deep into the night. But there’s a silence, in which Steve is only aware, and keenly so, of two things: the pump of his heart in his ears, and the way light plays on the bow of Bucky’s lips.

“Book you own that you wanted to read so bad when you bought it, but totally haven’t and it’s been on your shelf since you got it.”

Steve’s watching those lips move, and reads the words before he hears them, Bucky knocking him back to the world again by leaning forward and grabbing for what has to now be a cold jalapeno popper. 

“Umm,” Steve thinks to the bookcase in his apartment that’s woefully empty, and still mostly for show. “ _Cloud Atlas_ , maybe?” Though, to be fair, it caught his attention because the cover art was so interesting.

“I saw the movie,” Bucky nods as he chews, and Steve maybe follows the motion of his throat as he swallows just a little too closely. “They said the book was better, but you know. They usually say that.” He drinks from his lager, and Steve’s still watching his throat. “Tell me if they’re right?”

“Oh yeah,” Steve deadpans. “Don’t hold your breath.” He’s had the book for at least a year now, maybe more.

“I carried _Life of Pi_ around with me for an entire tour without cracking the spine,” Bucky answers, unprompted. “I still want to read it, though. I think, at the time, it was more about the thing than what was in it. If that makes sense.”

It does. Steve nods, because it makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Bucky makes _sense_ , to Steve.

With Steve.

He only notices the music, which was great, when it dies down, and the players start to pack their instruments away.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, reaching for the phone in his pocket and checking the time. “We’ve been here all night.”

He looks up, and Steve figures he should think of something to say, but fuck all if he can.

He doesn’t have words.

“Can I walk you home?” Bucky asks, and those are the words he didn’t have, and he kind of wishes he’d said them, because it’d be more sensible to walk Bucky home: he lives closer.

He mostly doesn’t wish he’d said them, though, because the longer the walk, the longer _this_ gets to last.

They mostly talk about ordinary things, weather and road works and complaining about the subway. They swap stories, mostly about Tony Stark because it’s funny and it’s a point of common contact beyond themselves and, where in any other scenario it’d seem sterile, politely disinterested, it’s anything but. It’s familiar, _too_ familiar by any stretch or defense for how long they _haven’t_ known one another. It’s intimate, in the casual way they settle into step like they’ve always known it.

Maybe they have. Steve thinks maybe he has. It’s as natural as anything in the world.

Which is probably how they end up at Steve’s door again, without Steve even noticing.

And suddenly? Steve can’t stand still, keep quiet. There’s a tightness in his chest that crawls up to his throat and makes words come out, unorganized and unplanned but at some point his hand slipped into Bucky’s on the way here, and he can’t just say nothing. He can’t just say goodnight, not when—

“I’d,” Steve starts, shakes his head. “I want to,” he stumbles, stammers; “to ask, and,” Steve’s tongue-tied, and it’s like the evening’s just beginning again, with the way his heart’s racing, but then:

“Me too,” Bucky says, voice low and layered with so much meaning Steve could drown in it if it didn’t make him so hopeful he could soar.

“Would you?” Steve leaps, and doesn’t fear falling, regardless of what the answer is as he tilts his head up the walk to the building door.

Bucky pauses, and even Steve can see the _wanting_ , and the glaze of regret over so much more _promise_ :

“Next time.” 

And Steve’s heart’s racing, still, but it’s singing in the process, because Bucky’s eyes are dark, and he’s leaning in and—

The touch of those lips again—after only days after barely a fucking _brush_ of their mouths, but days are too damn _long_ —is unimaginable. It’s hot, and tender, so full of want that Steve doesn’t know if it’s all from him—it could be, he wants that much and more—or if it’s shared, if he’s _wanted_ in kind like this, like _this_ , he _hopes_ ; and it sends shivers up and down Steve’s spine even as he reaches and curls his hand around Bucky’s neck and slides his tongue across Bucky’s teeth, tasting and devouring, and Bucky’s made of a flavor that Steve’s never encountered and cannot possibly get enough of: Steve breathes him in and it’s all lime and musk, sweat and sweetness and the smoky cocktail of tobacco and grill-burn of the city at night but made so fucking sexy, so much a thing to desire and never be full from that Steve’s not sure he even recognizes it as a thing he’s ever known before this moment, before he inhales it in Bucky’s hair and feels alive, like the life in his veins moved slow, barely worth a breath until now, until _now_ —

Bucky’s hand on the center of his chest isn’t a push, and somehow Steve knows he’s right to read it as a touchstone even as he feels his heart pounding all the more stark given the pressure there, and it’s sappy as all hell but Steve gets the distinct impression that it’s a safe hand for it, should the time come, should they—

“Next time.” Bucky voice is low, and rough, and his eyes bright, and his hand doesn’t move from Steve’s chest even as he splays metal fingers along Steve’s cheek, cradling his jaw and Steve can only lean in, can only turn and press lips to the fingertips and breathe out:

“Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> -
> 
> Chapter Six art by [toweroawesome](https://www.deviantart.com/toweroawesome/).


	7. absolutely overwhelming desire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Any other man would have left already. A less desperate man. _Steve_ is sorely tempted, because he’s been at this unbearable shindig and smiled at enough warmongering, paid-off politicians than he can stomach for one night, and he’s not even caught a _glimpse_ of Bucky. He’s not even sure he’s here, even though he _has_ to be here.
> 
> Still. Steve’s at a table in the corner now, mostly overlooked—thank god, seeing as there is literally _one_ person in the _entire_ world he’d like to notice him, and that person’s nowhere to be found—and he desperately needs the gin in this gin and tonic to actually work, right about now.
> 
> See? A less desperate man would have left by now.
> 
> He blames those thoughts, and how far entrenched he is in his own mind, for not noticing the figure approaching until his shadow casts over Steve from above.
> 
> “Well, hello handsome.”

When Steve was small, and scrappy, and stubborn and just a little violent, maybe, headstrong as anything and willing to solve problems first with his fists, his Ma was always scolding him, at best. But after the scolding, she’d sigh, and she’d look skyward and say something along the lines of _bless him, and let him make his own luck_.

Steve’s never been sure he understood where it came from, or what specifically it means. But he does know that it carried him through a number of fights he never should have walked away from, and certainly drove him through 4F after 4F until a pair of brilliant eyes through perched spectacles bet on the little guy, and gave him the world. 

So Steve’s not really thinking, so much as just acting on instinct and his mother’s voice in his ear, when he dials the number.

“Think you can wrangle me an invite to the benefit tomorrow?” he says, after exchanging more than just the requisite pleasantries—because the woman is a gift, honestly. None of them really deserve her.

“You’re lucky I’m an optimist,” Pepper answers, her tone wry but warm; “well, in comparison to the people around me,” she amends, and Steve laughs lightly. 

“We never expect it of you, Steve,” she says gently; “but there’s _always_ an invitation ready for you.”

And Steve’s heart jumps, because he knows that no dancing monkey worth his salt would miss a Stark Industries event like _this_ one.

And he’s damn well counting on it. He can’t wait any longer.

Steve’s never been a patient man, and well.

All evidence to the contrary, he always _did_ try to listen to his Ma, when he could. Mostly.

Sometimes.

________________________________________

Any other man would have left already. A less desperate man. _Steve_ is sorely tempted, because he’s been at this unbearable shindig and smiled at enough warmongering, paid-off politicians than he can stomach for one night, and he’s not even caught a _glimpse_ of Bucky. He’s not even sure he’s here, even though he _has_ to be here.

Still. Steve’s at a table in the corner now, mostly overlooked—thank god, seeing as there is literally _one_ person in the _entire_ world he’d like to notice him, and that person’s nowhere to be found—and he desperately needs the gin in this gin and tonic to actually work, right about now.

See? A less desperate man would have left by now.

He blames those thoughts, and how far entrenched he is in his own mind, for not noticing the figure approaching until his shadow casts over Steve from above.

“Well, hello handsome.”

There’s a heat that suffuses his entire body when he hears that voice, and oh.

“Bucky.”

Steve doesn’t mean for that name to come out so breathy, so needy. 

But it’s not like it’s a _lie_.

“Hey Stevie.” Bucky’s all in black, and god does it work for him—fitted, with the only part of his left arm on display being his ungloved hand and Steve is overcome, for a second; when the light hits the metal?

Steve’s struck with the absolutely overwhelming desire to take those fingers in between his lips and suck.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Steve blinks. Right. Can’t suck fingers in public.

Or, well. Should _not_ suck fingers in public. Bad form.

“I,” Steve blushes a little, oddly having nothing to do with his fantasizing and everything to do with how goddamn _happy_ he is to see this man in front of him, like it’s been a lifetime instead of just days. 

“I was maybe hoping to find you here.” Steve inclines his head toward the milling people at the party beyond them. “You’re a hard man to track down.”

“Wouldn’t have been, if I’d known you were coming,” Bucky shrugs with a grin, slipping his palms into his pockets and drawing Steve’s attention downward—

Jesus _Christ_.

“I’d sit and chat,” Bucky starts, but Steve shakes his head, tries not to be disappointed, or else, not to _show_ his disappointment at those words, and what they point to, mainly: Bucky being anywhere but with Steve, at this table, for just a minute or two.

“No, I mean, I understand,” Steve swallows, and forces something like a grin. “You’re a busy man.”

“I am, yeah,” Bucky smirks, and eyes Steve with an intensity that shoots through Steve’s veins hard. “At this very moment, in fact, I can’t think of anything more pressing.”

“I’ll be here,” Steve says, without thinking, because he doesn’t need to think. He’ll wait here, on the off chance Bucky has a break, doesn’t need to schmooze with some investor in the Stark project or some military contact he’s better equipped than Tony to talk into committing to the pilot program, because Steve, as previously established?

Steve’s kind of pathetically desperate, and really, _really_ far gone.

It takes him a second to realize that Bucky’s smirk’s turned into a grin, and it’s still aimed at Steve, because Bucky hasn’t left to schmooze, nope. Bucky’s still standing right there.

“Steve,” he says pointedly, just a little bit amused even, before he reaches out a theatrical hand.

“May I have this dance?”

Steve isn’t entirely sure he’d been fully aware that music was in fact playing at all, before that moment—and as soon as he notices it, and the people dancing on the other side of the room, it’s gone again, because his pulse is so fucking loud he can’t hear anything else.

“I,” Steve chokes out, and his voice might _actually_ crack like he’s still going through fucking puberty, wow. 

Like he said: pathetic. And desperate.

And really far gone.

“Yes?” Bucky prompts expectantly, not letting his hand fall. Steve’s mouth is dry, not least because it keeps opening and closing because his jaw’s broken, apparently, and he can’t focus on anything, let alone his keeping it from dropping every time he glances up to Bucky’s eyes, down to his hand, up, and then down, and back again.

“Guessing no one’s ever asked you this one, either,” Bucky ribs him, and there’s a shivering sensation in Steve’s stomach that he thinks he’d like to feel always, all anticipation and promise. 

“Again, horrible oversight,” Bucky leans in a little, drops his voice just so:

“Unforgivable, that.”

The pulse in Steve’s throat has to be visible, now, for how it strains against his collar; how it makes it hard as all hell just to swallow.

“I’ve, um,” Steve clears his throat, to literally no effect whatsoever. “I’ve kinda got two left feet.”

Steve doesn’t expect the snort that only _just_ fails to be restrained on Bucky’s part; but then again, he doesn’t expect anything less, and that’s the best thing.

The _best_ thing.

“Shit, what, serum didn’t fix that?” Bucky scoffs, glancing judgingly at Steve’s shined-shoes.

“I’d ask for a refund.”

Steve huffs a laugh, and his skin’s buzzing, and there’s something unidentifiable in the moment. There’s something there he can’t put his finger on that’s pushing him toward a cliff’s edge and a mountaintop and somewhere quiet to pray as much as to scream and hear it echo and his heartbeat’s still what breaks the static in his ears, until—

“Steve,” Bucky’s close, he’s _so close_ , and Steve can imagine the brush of his chest against Steve’s own body when he breathes, but only just because it’s almost a thing that doesn’t need imagination at all, it’s almost real, and _there_.

“It just so happens that I’m a fuckin’ excellent dancer.” 

Until Bucky. So much, Steve’s beginning to realize, was a certain way, for so long.

Until there was Bucky.

“And I’d be happy to take the lead.”

Steve meets Bucky’s eyes and it’s every cinema cliche, every saucy pulp he saw sometimes on Mrs. Abernathy’s kitchen table: but the world stops, and they’re the only ones left in it, when Bucky smiles, and Steve realizes Bucky’s never retracted the offer of his hand once, throughout their exchange: not once.

“What d’ya say?”

And Steve’s a fool in a lot of things, in a lot of ways, but this?

Steve’s not fool enough to do anything short of taking that hand and going wherever it damn well sees fit to lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> -
> 
> Chapter Seven art by [espressosaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espressosaur).


	8. feel you everywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So,” the breath toying with his hair changes pattern with the soft-spoken words; “without trying to count that first song-and-flash-the-shiny-arm benefit,” and the fingers at the dip of his spine start dancing up and down it gently, playing the ridges like keys. “Or the time you walked in on Tony fiddling with said shiny arm.”
> 
> Bucky presses his lips to Steve’s temple for a long moment, and Steve’s muscles couldn’t relax further into the man he’s splayed against, or so he thought; they release just a little more, proving him wrong.
> 
> “Museum, Rodney’s, last night.” Bucky’s lips curl against Steve’s skin as he whispers with a laugh in the words:
> 
> “I _told_ you I wouldn’t put out until the third date.”

“Next time, I said.” 

Bucky’s gasping into the curve of his jaw.

“You did,” Steve exhales shakily.

“Fuck,” and Steve shouldn’t be surprised by the way the entire hallway shakes when Bucky pushes him hard against the wall—Steve _isn’t_ surprised by the way his heart skips and then fucking _slams_ against his ribs for the way it turns him on, and his breath hitches as Bucky’s lips drag against his skin with words, they’re making words with their shape but Steve’s barely there, Steve’s barely noticing the way that Bucky’s leading them, dragging Steve’s body not with any physical force, exactly, unless his lips count, unless leading each press of his kiss further toward what Steve can only think to be the bedroom: unless that counts? 

Steve doesn’t know what counts, except that Bucky never stop touching, never _stop_ kissing him because those lips, goddamn, but those _lips_ —

“So fucking glad,” Bucky drags teeth down Steve’s throat and shit, _shit_ that’s good. That’s so fucking _good_ , and no, no, Steve’s not fucking _glad_ , he’s fucking _elated_ , Steve thinks he’s probably died, finally, and he did something right or God got it wrong and sent him something _divine_ and it’s this, it’s Bucky’s hands on his body, tearing his shirt off, running through his hair and grasping his face and pressing against him like he’s the whole world and fuck, _fuck_ —

He doesn’t realize they’ve made it to the bed until he’s tossed against it, on top of it, but only in such a way that Bucky’s clamoring on top of him, like the only reason he’s on that bed is so that Bucky only has to think about pressing against him, touching him everywhere and as much as he can, and nothing so pointless and useless as standing, maintaining balance, putting one foot in front of the other.

“So fuckin’ glad it’s next time,” Bucky murmurs against Steve’s jaw and Steve shudders, he’s already so fucking close to coming apart and they’re barely even there, they’ve barely even started.

Steve doesn’t want this to end. Steve doesn’t _ever_ want this to end, so he looks up, meets the glow of Bucky’s eyes, so fucking bright with heat and want, and he doesn’t think twice when he uses all the strength he has, that he’s never really clocked the purpose and possibility of until this moment, and it’s only after he does it, only after he flips them and Bucky’s pupils are dilated and he’s hale and whole, still, that Steve marvels: this man.

This man can _take_ it.

This man can take _him_.

So Steve’s pretty fucking sure he’s gotta be dead and this is a Heaven he didn’t count on or earn, some cosmic gift that he didn’t realize he’d been wanting for so long, so goddamn _long_.

“Steve,” Bucky gasps, even before Steve starts working his way down Bucky’s sternum, thumbing his nipples as he moves lower, and lower, and feels the tensing of Bucky’s muscles beneath his lips, the gasping in the heaving of his chest and the breaths that catch in his hair; “Steve, I—”

“Shh,” Steve hushes into the crease of Bucky’s thigh, nosing the curls there and the hardness growing swiftly against the curve of his jaw; “let me.”

And it’s been a pretty long time, and even then Steve’s never been what anyone could stretch to call ‘practiced’, but shaping his mouth around the tip is like an invitation, the length awaiting like his entire body was made to take it in, to make it his own and swallow it down and so that’s exactly what it does, because it feels goddamn _right_.

“Jesus,” Bucky curses as his hips jerk, and he fights it, tries not to throw Steve but Steve’s following without complaint, Steve’s dedicated to a singular task as he sucks and plays his tongue at the lines of veins and swallows when the tip his the back of his throat—and hell if there wasn’t a silver lining to being sick all the time as a kid, then, nigh-on a century late: he’s got no gag reflex.

None at all.

“Fucking hell, Steve.”

Steve wants to grin at that but his lips are busy, and hell if he’s going to compromise what’s apparently a halfway-decent blowjob, if the results are anything to go by, with letting up on the pressure, the press of teeth just so, just that little bit so the air that’s rushing through Bucky’s lungs catches and hisses and throbs a soft-sure rhythm out against the hollowing of Steve’s cheeks and oh, yeah.

Hell if Steve’s gonna compromise _that_.

“I’m close,” Bucky gasps, and that’s when Steve _does_ let his lips curl, lets himself pull a smile off of Bucky’s cock, laving his tongue up the streams of come pearling brighter than Steve’s spit against the length and savoring the fucking taste with a shiver that feels revelatory, like he’s alive in a way he wasn’t before, god _damn_.

“Good.”

Bucky lifts himself up and looks at him with enough momentary betrayal to make Steve want to laugh but he can’t, his heart’s getting big in his throat too quick for it to come out because it’s good, it’s so good, and Steve _wants_ , and maybe the best thing he can think of in the world is the look of dawning comprehension on Bucky’s face that takes him from the wide-eyed _you’re fucking kidding Rogers, you asshole, you cannot leave me like this_ to the truth of _why_ Steve doesn’t want Bucky to come, yet, in his mouth, much as he _wants_ that, yes, of course he fucking does, but now? He doesn’t, he doesn’t because—

“You,” Bucky says slowly, blinking slower. “I mean, is this,” he gestures vaguely, eyes widening as seeing what Steve means starts to _mean_ something.

Steve wants him. So fucking bad.

This man can take him, and Steve wants him to, right fucking now.

But—

“I can, I mean, I,” Steve fumbles, because maybe he read it all wrong, or they’re not ready, or maybe Bucky’s just not into it like that, don’t jump to the worst conclusion Steve, or maybe Bucky’s not into him like that, or probably Steve actually read it all wrong, back to the most likely scenario because Steve’s not this lucky; “if you don’t? I mean—”

“Yes.” 

Bucky says it in a breath, barely, and he’s got palms framing Steve’s face, and Steve gets a second to relish the feeling of it on its own before Bucky’s drawing him in and kissing him deep enough to taste his fucking _soul_ , and Steve doesn’t even know where that lives, just that Bucky’s teasing it and wants it like anything and Steve thinks, in this moment, he’d fucking give it and say thank you for the taking, too.

 _Jesus_.

“It’s,” Bucky mouths against the corner of Steve’s lips and Steve can feel his own pulse like a ricochet against that whisper-touch when Bucky exhales:

“God, _yes_.”

Bucky reaches to the side—nightstand, Steve processes—and grabs a telltale bottle, uncapping it with a deft thumb and circling his index finger before he twists his fist around the middle and ring in kind and Steve can’t swallow, mouth too dry, at the promise that comes, that sits at absolute, beautiful, unbearable odds with the hesitant want in Bucky’s eyes that matches the question from his lips:

“Can I?”

“Anything,” Steve says, arguably too fast but then again, not fast enough, because: “whatever you want, just,” and Steve didn’t realize how much he needed, how deeply he was thrumming, how close to an unseeable edge he’s shaking on, praying for the fall and yes, _yes_ , anything:

“Fucking _please_ , Buck.”

“Fuck,” Bucky answers, the word more breath than anything made of letters, eyes swollen black from the center to the otherworldly rim of sea-storm on the outsides, at the rims, and oh god, oh _god_ : Steve’s spreading his legs and pulling them up like an instinct, like this got writ in his bones before he knew how to breathe. 

And honestly? Steve’s thought a lot about Bucky’s fingers opening him up, stretching him fast or slow, careful or too needy for patience, too desperate but so full of desire: he’s thought about it more than he’s thought about some mission specs, but he hadn’t really thought there was any level of being disappointed in it, should the thought ever slide from fantasy to reality. And there isn’t, disappointment that is, not even close: but there turns out he’d had a preference without knowing it, because when Bucky starts to spread Steve’s cheeks and kneed the flesh more aggressively with his right hand than his left, Steve’s already too close to lost to think about much, but there’s a twinge of wanting that he didn’t think of.

He wants Bucky to use his left hand. He wants that metallic precision in him as much as anything because it’s Bucky, this is _Bucky_ and Steve’s never met anyone close to Bucky in his life. 

But he shouldn’t have worried, because he’s trembling by the time Bucky leans and runs a tongue just outside the cleft of Steve’s ass before he works in first, yes, his right index, but once that’s done the job, he doesn’t add the middle finger.

Nope, he adds the left index alongside.

And Steve gasps loud enough for the neighbors to hear, if he gave a shit at all.

“Thought you might like that,” Bucky says, a huff of self-satisfaction that’s hot as hell on its own, or Steve presumes as much, because he’s overwhelmed entirely as Bucky pulls and strokes and caresses and Steve feels himself clench, flutter, give against Bucky’s touch and fuck, _fuck_ —

He feels himself wet with lube and sweating more than is probably defensible because they’re only at the start, really, but Steve’s so taken, so consumed, and the promise of Bucky inside him is somehow a given as much as it’s unfathomable, and Steve’s caught between impossibilities and realities he doesn’t know if it’s safe to breathe inside, lest he shatter it around him and cut himself on the shards, and oh. _Oh_.

But Bucky’s drawing his fingers from Steve’s entrance—worked up to three, two of them slick metal and the most perfect thing in the world, something Steve hadn’t even thought to imagine and all the more incredible for it, too—and maybe Steve whimpers because he feels empty, maybe Steve has enough presence of mind for a fraction of a second to wonder how he never noticed that emptiness before, to wonder if maybe that’s just how it works but it sure as hell isn’t going to work now, not now that he _knows_ — 

“Hold on, babe,” Bucky says, dropping an incongruously innocent kiss to Steve’s brow, and it’s then that Steve realizes that yep, he’s been whimpering and on top of that? He’s grasping, pawing at Bucky like he can’t imagine losing his heat even as he makes to draw away.

“What?” Steve says, genuinely at a loss in his head as much as he is in his body.

“You know,” Bucky quirks a brow; “gloves _and_ glide?” he tilts his head to where the lube, well, near where it probably landed. Ish.

“In the bathroom,” Bucky clarifies. “Didn’t want to jinx it.”

And Steve wouldn’t have noticed the difference between sex flush and a genuine blush without the serum in his veins but he’s got the serum, so he notices. And it clenches like the sweetest need in his chest, dear _lord_.

“Oh,” Steve says dumbly around all the feeling and all the whirlwind of _everything_ that distracts from sense in the moment, in the reality of Bucky’s bare skin—when did they both lose all their clothes? Steve kinda wishes he remembered that, except nope, not if it meant missing _anything_ else that’s happened, that he’s felt thus far—against his own.

“Right,” Steve nods slowly, because that feels probably right; right? “I mean...”

“Unless you,” Bucky jumps in, reading Steve’s fucked-out-lethargy-except-not-yet-oh-hell-what-is-coming-for-him-when-Bucky-takes-him-for-real; reading that as hesitance when it’s anything but. “I mean, we can, if you want me to do it like,” and Bucky’s hand slides back down to cup Steve’s ass, fingering the cleft as an offer, and oh. Oh, wow, yeah.

“Another time,” Steve makes himself breathe, because he wants to feel Bucky, more than just his hands; he _needs_ to feel Bucky, all of him, entirely, and he needs it right fucking now.

“But yeah,” Steve nods again, more aware this time with a glance toward the ensuite bath across the room. “if you want them.”

And Bucky rises, with another kiss against Steve’s mussed-as-fuck hair, this time, before he pauses, only halfway off the bed.

“If,” Bucky pauses, the syllables spilling slowly, as he processed words that Steve didn’t even think about, and maybe that says something even more about James Buchanan Barnes, that in the heat of it all, he picked it up, and thinks to ask: 

“If I _want_ them?”

Steve, this time, is the one blushing.

“I’m,” he clears his throat, awkward as hell. “The way I am,” he settles on, as explanation. “You can’t give me anything.” 

Which is true. It was in the fine print. He ended up having a lot of time between the gym and avoiding his own grief and anger completely unsuccessfully, post-thaw.

“I’m clean,” Bucky says, seemingly rote, as he blinks blankly at Steve in a way that makes Steve feel the need to fill the space that stretches because he doesn’t want it to stretch far enough to lose the heat between them, for it to get cold because Steve can’t bear that, he won’t.

“And I can’t, y’know, carry anything,” Steve adds, realising he should have fucking started with _that_ , and he’s verging on nervous babbling for it now—which he’s long wondered why the serum couldn’t have fixed _that_. “So.”

Steve’s pretty sure he’s ruined something he never thought he’d ever have before he could even _have_ it, until the heat’s back, full force, and the touch is back, _everywhere_ , and Bucky’s leaped onto him and pinned him to the bed and he’s kissing Steve like it’s the end of being itself, like he can suck Steve’s heart and soul out from his mouth and he’s saying one word, over and over again and it makes Steve’s blood pump hard when he figures out what it is, what it means:

“ _Yes_.”

Oh, thank _god_. 

Bucky spends long, torturous moments running hands along Steve’s chest, tracing the lines of his hips, drawing shivers from Steve that Steve believes, wholeheartedly in a heart that’s pounding faster and harder than he thinks it’s ever done: Steve believes he will come the fuck apart for this, and quick, but he wants to come apart in those hands, and he thinks they’ll put him back together but even if they don’t, or can’t, he doesn’t care.

That touch makes him feel precious. Makes him feel—

_Fuck_

“Steve,” Bucky breathes, and he’s speaking against Steve’s jawline, now, suddenly, and his whole front splayed against Steve’s so their gasping weighs against each other in a way Steve doesn’t have the words to fit, and Steve thinks that his own name from Bucky’s lips is the same: too full, too big for words to understand.

It’s unreal.

“I’ve wanted you since the second I saw you,” Steve can’t keeps the words in, can’t do anything but say the things too big for words himself, to trust that they’ll mean something, that they’ll hold _something_ that matches, that shows he wants so much deeper than he can say. 

“Your eyes,” Steve gasps, as Bucky starts kneading the insides of his thighs. “I saw those eyes and I just, _needed_ ,” Steve gasps as Bucky’s mouth finds his nipple. “I needed before I knew what I, that, I,” Steve trembles, and Bucky places hands at Steve’s hips, asking something vague but clear all at once, asking how Steve wants this and Steve knows his answer because it wasn’t a question, and he spreads his legs wider and cants his hips up for leverage, for momentum to hook over Bucky’s shoulders, awkward and unsteady but hopefully without any room for doubt.

“I needed before I knew that I needed a goddamn thing,” Steve exhales, staring through into Bucky’s eyes, and he finds something there, even if he’s not sure what; he finds something there that makes him feel warm and like he could know, one day, how it feels to be complete.

“Like this,” Bucky’s hands move from kneading to stroking up Steve’s legs and situating them, positioning himself just right. 

“Your eyes, too,” Bucky says, staring so fucking deep, so fucking _fast_ in Steve’s pulse. “I wanna—”

“Like this,” Steve breathes, answers, begs; reaching and gripping Bucky’s shoulders, both so warm. “Just like this.”

And the light around them doesn’t shift but Bucky’s eyes damn well flash as Bucky swallows, and Steve can see his pulse in his throat around the motion, and it’s breathtaking.

Or else, it was, until Bucky slides into him, slow but sure, in one carefully measured movement, and oh, _breathtaking_ : but Bucky Barnes redefines that word.

Bucky has to be studying him, watching so closely and with absolute attention because striking the perfect rhythm isn’t a process of trial and error, like Steve’s generally known before, but instead a slow build of precision that teases just as long as it needs to, as far as it can before it spills supernovas behind Steve’s eyes and fucking _hell_ , but it’s brilliance and agony and everything Steve’s ever felt before expanded, exploded, and so much _more_ , so much of the things he never thought about touching because who could touch heat and brightness, there’s nothing, there’s everything, there’s—

“I wanna feel you, everywhere,” Steve gasps when Bucky slides home and Steve doesn’t think he’s got breath left until he says the words, until he demands and still it comes out like a plea: “harder.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice, babydoll,” and no, apparently. Steve didn’t. Because harder is exactly what he gets, and it’s glorious, and Steve’s not sure what bruises, anymore, what can and can’t show on his skin but he thinks this is gonna push whatever threshold exists because the hands at Steve’s sides are holding so hard, and it’s got nothing to do with enhanced limbs and everything to do with sheer want and Steve loves it, and when his neck tips back Bucky’s mouth takes the opening, and Steve’s gonna lose it, he’s absolutely going to lose it and it’s going to be soon, goddamnit, god _damnit_ —

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky doesn’t cry out, or scream, but more like he sighs it as he shakes through his climax and Steve gasps as he comes hard and hot between them, and they both give out in the same moment as Steve falls back onto the bed and Bucky falls slick onto Steve and it’s hard to breathe and Steve doesn’t fucking care, he doesn’t care because the weight against his chest makes his heartbeat so loud and stark and he doesn’t know the last time he’s felt so _real_ , like the moment is his forevermore and no one can ever touch it. Just him.

Just _them_.

He comes back to himself enough to shift, and to notice that Bucky isn’t; that they’re both soft, now, and Steve’s caught between their bodies and he makes to move before they stick but when he tries, Bucky moans—and Steve doesn’t know what that means.

“Buck?”

“Shh,” Bucky breathes against the hollow of Steve’s throat, shaking his head ever-so-slow. “Just.”

Steve frames Bucky’s face and lifts a little, but Bucky’s eyes are closed, so Steve just strokes his cheek and asks:

“You okay?”

The huff he gets in response is a little broken, and Steve knows the feeling intimately, in these moments, just now.

“Okay?” Bucky says, sounding a little bit hysterical. “Steve, I’m so far from okay, and so much more than okay I can barely hold it in.”

Bucky’s not pressed against his chest the same way anymore, but the thump Steve’s heart gives at that is the heaviest, hardest, most undeniable thing that Steve’s ever known.

Of that, he’s entirely sure.

Steve doesn’t know what to say, or what to do; if he’s supposed to do either, but Bucky starts talking, barely audible into Steve’s skin and that skin starts buzzing, even before the words register.

After, though; after they register? Steve thinks his whole _being_ starts to shake.

“You let me, you gave _me_ ,” Bucky murmurs, still shaking his head just a little into the base of Steve’s neck. “I, I got to live moments of my life just _feeling_ you, just feeling _you_ and I,” Bucky’s voice cracks, and he shakes his head back and forth, silent save for his breathing for a few moments, and he clings tighter to Steve with his hands still at Steve’s hips, and Steve holds to him tighter in kind, because there’s nothing else, there’s nothing else he could possibly do. 

“Just let me,” Bucky breathes, soft and spent and no longer shaking his head but laying it gentle against Steve’s skin: 

“Please, just let me stay here a second longer.”

“Alright,” Steve says, because again, there’s nothing else.

There’s nothing else, and maybe the words didn’t come out of Steve’s mouth, but Bucky’s _inside_ him, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he loses it.

So seconds, minutes—a lifetime. 

Alright.

Bucky eventually shudders, and lifts up, slides out, and yeah: it’s more of a loss than even Steve was fearing but Bucky doesn’t go anywhere, Bucky just rolls off of Steve and lines his body against Steve’s side, leaves an open palm stretch out over Steve’s chest and it feels protective, more than possessive, and Steve’s not sure what causes that difference but it’s clear and it’s true and Steve wants it forever.

And that’s dangerous.

“You with me?” Steve breathes, and Bucky doesn’t say anything, for more seconds than are strictly comfortable when they’re naked next to each other, and Steve’s mulling over just how good he feels, and just how much danger’s never turned him away once in his entire life.

“I um, I say stupid shit sometimes,” Bucky finally says, the cheek against Steve’s skin heating up as he trips over the words a little. “After I come.” He smiles, small, and Steve can feel it between his ribs—can hear it, self-deprecating, as Bucky adds: “Character flaw.”

Steve feels something uncomfortable settle in the pit of his stomach, and yeah, maybe he’d never before been with anyone who would say that because people don’t usually _say_ that kind of thing out loud ever, really, so something was up with it, something wasn’t _meant_ in it, just a slip of the tongue in the heat of the moment, that’s fine, yeah, and— 

“Doesn’t always mean it isn’t also true, though,” Bucky says, a little more strength in his voice, more steadiness at least, even if it’s so soft: “the stupid shit.” 

And the uncomfortable thing in Steve’s stomach dissolves and all he feels is warm, in those moments, and he turns so he can kiss Bucky, slow like the world’s going to wait for them, forever, and Bucky responds in kind, and it feels…

Right. Above everything else, it just feels _right_.

“You’re amazing.”

Steve doesn’t think those are the words he means to say, or the words stuck between his still-pounding heart and his mouth, not exactly, but they make Bucky smile, and that smile is the whole world, suddenly, and so yeah. 

That’s enough.

________________________________________

Steve wakes, and it’s the middle of the night, but it’s a natural thing. And that never happens. He either wakes in the morning and goes for a run or, every now and again, he wakes in the dark gasping from one nightmare or another: all the things that he’s done, or failed to do, or failed to do _right_ —

But no. He’s awake, and he’s warm, and he’s breathing easy, his heart’s steady, and the weight across his body is so fucking pleasant that he smiles as he reaches out, and gently tucks some of the mess of Bucky’s hair behind his ear, drawing a little snuffle and a sigh and then steady breaths, and that just makes Steve smile wider as he watches Bucky sleep, traces the curves of his face, the cut of his jaw and his cheekbones, imagines them in charcoal, in graphite, in oils and marble and soft under his hands: memorizes, he tells himself, but it’s more a function of the truth than a fact on its own, because Steve’s mesmerized. He couldn’t look away if he tried.

“I could fall so fuckin’ hard for you,” and God Almighty, but somewhere down the line Steve’s made lying into one hell of a habit, hasn’t he? Because he couldn’t, he _can’t_ fall fucking hard for James Buchanan Barnes. It’s not possible. 

It’s not _possible_ to fall when you’ve already fallen. 

________________________________________

Steve comes to again with patterns being drawn at the small of his back, and gentle breaths falling along his scalp, playing with his hair on every exhale. There’s a steady thump under his ear and warmth _everywhere_ , and Steve’s pretty sure he never, ever wants to move again. Ever.

“So,” the breath toying with his hair changes pattern with the soft-spoken words; “without trying to count that first song-and-flash-the-shiny-arm benefit,” and the fingers at the dip of his spine start dancing up and down it gently, playing the ridges like keys. “Or the time you walked in on Tony fiddling with said shiny arm.”

Bucky presses his lips to Steve’s temple for a long moment, and Steve’s muscles couldn’t relax further into the man he’s splayed against, or so he thought; they release just a little more, proving him wrong.

“Museum, Rodney’s, last night.” Bucky’s lips curl against Steve’s skin as he whispers with a laugh in the words:

“I _told_ you I wouldn’t put out until the third date.”

The joy in Steve’s chest bubbles upward and he laughs.

 _God_ , but he laughs, and he kisses Bucky’s chest like the sky might be falling and this chest is the only thing Steve’s charged to protect with all his heart and soul, and then Bucky’s hands are trailing down his sides, and then Steve’s moving further down, down that chest, and the joy doesn’t stop suffusing as the sheets shift, as Steve mouths down the trail of curls tracing a line down Bucky’s abs, and Steve doesn’t remember waking to a better morning before. 

_Ever_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)


	9. kind of incredible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ _Double_ sugar, little bit of milk,” and before Steve can take the mug, Bucky pulls it away but only as a function of leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to Steve’s lips. “Calling bullshit, again, that you don’t have much of a sweet tooth.”
> 
> “I didn’t think I did,” Steve protests, and when he takes the cup in hand it’s him pulling it out of the way to kiss Bucky’s lips, now, deeper than he got but no more or less perfect. “What was it you said? Just had to find it?”
> 
> Steve draws back only when Bucky’s grin get a little wide for kissing and not losing himself in it—he’s got a hot drink in hand, after all—but Bucky’s eyes are closed and his cheeks flushed happily and Steve’s warm all over in a way that neither the coffee, nor the blanket, could ever hope to touch.
> 
> “Something like that.”

Days blend together. Cliched, but true. 

Steve doesn’t spend the night alone after that first night, that first time. And it’d be too quick, or too claustrophobic; it should be too much, or too soon or whatever the hell people say—but it’s none of those things, not like this. And it’s a little bit terrifying, and that should make Steve pause and think this through, maybe, except Steve learned a long time ago to trust his instincts. And his instincts tell him that the terror should shut the fuck up, and even if it won’t, he won’t stop this. He doesn’t _want_ to stop this, doesn’t want to do a single goddamn thing that could even possibly mean less time with Bucky, less of the breaths he breathes of the same air as Bucky. Because it’s not too much, or too quick.

Not with _him_.

Because Bucky’s fucking beautiful. Inside, outside, upside-down and backwards, Bucky Barnes is the most stunning thing Steve’s ever known. From the way he always sips his coffee a second too early and frowns at the lingering burn, to the way his hair curls and frizzes at the edges when he’s toweled-off fresh from the shower; to the way he helps his neighbor unload groceries because her arthritis causes trouble, to how he sends little trinkets to his sisters—all three of them—just because he sees something that makes him think of them, and can, and the way that he starts to do the same for Steve, even if half of said little gifts are heartfelt, and the other are Cap-themed with a sly grin and Steve doesn’t actually know which is better; from the way he half dances to no tune when he cooks at the stove, sliding around on the balls of his socked feet, to the way he blinks at Steve when Bucky’s the one who wakes later, and his eyes dance like Steve’s the sun waking him up, like a warm fist around Steve’s heart that Steve couldn’t possibly do anything but chase full-bodied and whole-soul.

Utterly fucking _beautiful_.

Bucky’s hilarious, even when he’s not hilarious. He’s hilarious when he snarks at his siblings—Becca, the eldest Barnes, and Bucky’s Irish twin, who meets Bucky’s sarcasm swipe for swipe to Steve’s great amusement even before Becca convinces Bucky to put their conversations on speaker (not that Steve’s enhanced hearing always needs it, given he’s usually in Bucky’s lap during their calls), usually with the intention of trying to get Steve to arbitrate one silly argument or another but more often just embroiling Steve and every single one of his own argumentative opinions in the debate at hand until they’re all three of them cackling, and Steve loves every second of it; Cara, Bucky’s younger sister by three years who’s working as an administrative assistant for a big-deal conglomerate in Manhattan that’s tapped her to help with setting up new offices in Belfast—she’s been there for almost a year now, and as far as Steve can tell, calls to regale Bucky with the office drama and international gossip twice a month largely because making Bucky laugh is a universal goal for anyone who knows him, and a universal joy to anyone lucky enough to witness it, and Bucky never fails to tell an equally absurd, albeit highly-redacted, tale from his unit, and sometimes (arguably the best times) about Tony’s antics surrounding Bucky’s arm; and Lizzy, the baby of the family and the one Bucky both dotes on and embarrasses in equal measure, though Steve feels a very specific kind of warmth in his chest when she stops seeming embarrassed because _Steve_ hears what’s being said, when it seems like he slips into a role where his presence, and therefore knowledge of whatever Bucky’s saying, is an accepted given.

Bucky’s hilarious when he talks to his parents, too: usually Win, who he first called for help on a family recipe and so Steve got unexpectedly caught face-to-face on a video call with his boyfriend’s mom as he relayed instructions between a terrifying-prospect of a conversation that turned out being actually pretty wonderful, because Win was, _is_ , lovely—easy-going and never interrogating and as casually, playfully sarcastic as the rest of the family, and with Steve too right off the bat, and Steve thinks he’ll never learn how to live without Sarah Rogers, not wholly, but _god_ : he hadn’t realised that he’d forgotten how to live without a mother until he’d spoken to Win on his own when Bucky’d forgotten his phone when he went for groceries, and they’d just talked about Steve, and how Steve was, and what Win was up to in her classroom—teaching high-schoolers, Steve thinks not for the first time, may be more harrowing than anything Steve does for a living; they’d spoken for a good hour and Steve had felt light in a way he hadn’t expected, and his eyes had stung, and Steve only realized after they hung up that they’d talked about every holiday coming up in the next year, and Steve being there, being _with_ Bucky and _at_ the Barnes’ table, was a given.

Oddly, Steve is probably more hilarious with George, because George delights most in ribbing his son and pretending to be very bad at technology when Bucky tries to get him to video chat; pretending, quite obviously, because he’d made a living in computers, working for Apple early in his career and keeping enough stocks on-hand from those years to retire early— _not enough for a yacht_ , he’d explained dryly, _but enough to pay off the mortgage and take my wife to Hawaii_ —and those two delights endear him to Steve pretty easily, because Steve enjoys those two things quite a bit himself. What’s funny about Bucky, there, is the way he groans, sometimes even _blushes_ , when Steve gangs up on him alongside George until Bucky pouts gorgeously, wholly undermining the way he threatens to throw Steve out—what’s glorious about that is that Steve never for a moment believes him, and Steve’s never been confident in the way he fits with another human being like that before; what’s glorious is the way that Bucky buries his reddening cheeks in Steve’s chest and whines even as he’s cursing Steve and his father shamelessly.

Bucky’s also hilarious when he makes faces at babies over their mother’s shoulders in elevators, sparing no absurdity in his expression to make a tiny human giggle, and it twists something fierce and exquisite in Steve’s chest when he watches it play out—something he doesn’t exactly recognize, save to know that it vibrates on the same frequency as every right thing he knows. Maybe it’s not hilarious, to be honest. Maybe Steve is ready for just about anything, but not yet ready to name what that feeling is. He’s adorable though, and the kids find him hilarious, so. 

So.

He has nightmares sometimes. More than sometimes. Bucky has a lot of nightmares and it breaks Steve’s heart more than a little, for the way that it displays, real and raw from the throat, everything Bucky’s suffered, all the trauma and horror someone so _good_ has known; for the way Bucky’s told him he hasn’t bothered with a relationship that’s lasted more than a few weeks since he got back from overseas, which makes a possessive little space in Steve’s hindbrain gleeful, but every other part of him feel the need to hold Bucky closer to try and make up for all the nights he screamed himself awake on his own, even if that’s how he wanted it then—and the privilege of it, to be able to feel Bucky’s pounding heartbeat slow against Steve’s own, to kiss the sweat from his brow, and know that whatever kept Bucky from staying with someone before was something he decided against with Steve, of all people.

The extra gutpunch of it, though—a privilege beyond anything Steve could have imagined—is that Steve finds out he does, too. Or else, at least, far more often than he ever thought he did. He woke himself up with them every once in a while, before, but apparently he slept through more of them, forgot them come morning: and now, he doesn’t. He doesn’t, because when they start, when he tenses, when he begins to toss and breathe heavy and catching, now arms tighten around him, and oftentimes he doesn’t even wake exactly. But arms tighten around him and an open palm rubs up and down his chest ever so slowly, and lips press just behind his ear and Steve breathes and whatever failure was plaguing him fades before it roots in his mind; when he does wake, Bucky’s always there, and Steve sinks unapologetically into him, and whatever the nightmare was, it feels distant. It could have been something that happened a week ago, but when Bucky’s warm and real and breathing against him, wrapped around him and whispering soft-sweet nonsense to him, it’s all far away in comparison.

Just thinking about it makes Steve a little bit weak in the knees, and fluttery between his ribs.

To be fair: Bucky is also annoying as hell, but Steve’s far gone enough that about half the time, after he’s felt sufficiently irked about whatever Bucky’s done, Steve finds him adorable for it. Bucky slips his boots off in a frankly impressive way, given how tight the laces are, but then swears a blue streak when he can’t slip them back on again. Bucky leaves a trail of coffee mugs, and _no other dishware_ , around the apartment, from bedroom to the front-door table where he drops his keys and Steve still hasn’t figured out how the mugs even get _there_. Bucky loads the dishwasher with the knives blade down—correct—but the forks tines-up—wrong, wrong, entirely wrong. Much as he’d been happpy to nix condoms in their increasingly adventurous sex life, Bucky consistently underestimates their need for lube when he’s out shopping, always happy to fall back on the lube-like substance Tony kept him stocked with for his arm, and while Steve gets that this is his problem more than it's Bucky’s, Steve doesn’t like being stretched on arm lube courtesy of Tony Stark, and Bucky’s persistent tendency to overlook that fact and kill every hundredth erection Steve gets is...well.

It’s annoying. No erection with Bucky Barnes should be squandered, last of all because of fucking Iron Man. 

Also, sure, Bucky doesn’t leave just crumbs in a bag of chips, but he does clip them at the top no matter how many or few are left making it impossible to guess how much is left—though, to his credit, he stocks up on sales like it’s his job, and that _could_ be annoying but it also means that when Bucky clips the Cheetos at the top and there’s only two handfuls inside, there are also four more bags of Cheetos at the back of the pantry. Either way, Steve finds himself adjusting around it without much thought, and it’s kind of amazing, kind of infuriating.

Kind of incredible.

Not that it’s surprising or anything, but Bucky is brave as hell—and not just for what Steve learns in little pieces that build to harrowing truths: from soft-whispered tail-ends of thoughts when Bucky shakes away the last of a bad dream in Steve’s arms, or the way Bucky will tell a story from his deployment and sometimes will throw a wink and a _classified, sorry_ at Steve in a way _no one_ has ever done to Captain America before—and that Steve Rogers, specifically, adores all the more for it—and then sometimes, the story will trail off without an end in a way that Steve comes to recognize as butting up against Bucky’s time in captivity, and the loss of his limb. More than all that, Steve sees just how brave Bucky is in the way he lets Steve see the still-raw parts of Bucky’s wounds from that time—months, they’d had him for _months_ and Steve is torn, repeatedly, between wanting to steal a quinjet and blow every possible person responsible to hell and back, just to do it again for the fear in it, rather than just the rage, for the impossibility that Bucky _survived_ when he far more easily could have been lost before Steve ever knew him, ever knew the weight of him in his arms or the feel of his lips; either he wants to run off and destroy the people responsible, and those responsible for them as far as the web stretches, but equally he wants to hold Bucky close enough that Steve can feel his pulse through the skin against Steve’s own chest and never, ever let go.

Steve also learns what it means for Bucky to have the arm Tony engineered, beyond the obvious. He learns just why Bucky’s able to hold so firm, to take all of Steve’s weight when they’re in bed—specially designed injections into the muscles of both arms so that Bucky could build the sufficient mass to support the arm, and balance his strength on the right; injections that Bruce had collaborated in, ensuring they were safe, _twenty times over, Steve, at least, there’s no super-soldier fuckery in it, and no risk of turning green, we just needed to work out the kinks on a person, and the early models were way heavier_ , and okay, Bucky’s obviously fine and Tony _and_ Bruce are probably among the most trustworthy people on the subject, despite the former also being a professional dickhead, plus they’d have collaborated with Helen as a rule and she actually _is_ the most trustworthy person Steve can think of, but even so. Even _so_ , Steve’s blood is pounding adrenaline even as the very muscles in question hold him close for comfort: the risks beneath the risks of what Bucky’s been through, the path Bucky’s chosen and _keeps_ choosing…

Yeah. Yeah, Bucky’s fucking brave. And admittedly, it helps soothe Steve’s anxieties that Bucky demonstrates the perks of those choices on the way he can lift Steve—not for as long as Steve could do the same, but long enough to carry him to the bed, and to drop him with deliberate force so that he can pounce on Steve and settle his weight, straddled at Steve’s hips as he sucks bruises deep enough to last hours into Steve’s neck and, yes.

Yes, that _definitely_ helps.

Steve also learns that Bucky has had to go under the knife a whole fucking lot for the arm, and is waiting for another go now— _when Tony’s satisfied with the changes, which could be tomorrow or next year, but it’s also the last one for a while, if all goes well, so whatever_ , but it’s not that simple, Steve knows that, because Bucky also makes it clear that any further changes, as the program expands, would be risk-assessed and tested on him first if there was any estimable increased risk involved. But more than that is the fact that Bucky’s awake for almost all of the procedures, which is horrifying to Steve even as Bucky explains he has to be, oftentimes, to judge reactions and neural connection, or Steve thinks that’s what it is, but it’s not even _just_ that.

It’s the fact that, when he can’t be awake, Bucky admits that he’s absolutely terrified. He’s terrified because when he was held captive they’d kept him half-conscious more often than not, and to this day he doesn’t know for sure what was real and what was a fever dream as his arm hanged dead and half-attached as long as it could be left before it killed him with sepsis—his torturers had been hateful, and heartless, and _smart_ —and Bucky fears, more than most things, the haze of anesthesia, the idea of leaving himself vulnerable to what he’ll never remember, not for certain. And he trembles, just talking about it even as he commits in the very same breath to doing it over and again for as long as it takes to help as many people as they can, and Steve’s heart _hurts_ for it, for all of it: but hell if that’s not maybe the bravest thing of all.

And for that, alongside so many other things: Bucky is kind. Good god, is he _kind_.

He’s moody, and it’s a testament to how much Steve _feels_ that usually, Steve’s first impulse is to comfort, to soothe. It takes a bit to learn, and then longer to not get hurt—if he’s honest, that’s still a work in progress—when Bucky just needs space and time and quiet to feel like shit. Steve just wants to fix whatever is bringing him so low, and like all things in his life, Steve hates it when he can’t punch or glare or will something into submission, to make things right by force. What he does do, every time, is wait for Bucky in bed. And Bucky comes to him, sooner or later, to be held, or to be kissed, or to ride Steve into next week. And usually, the next morning, they’re both in a pretty good mood to start with. The end doesn’t justify the means, but it does end well, and Steve will goddamn take it. 

He’s genuinely impressive. From the fact that he’d already planned a degree in engineering on a scholarship at Columbia before he’d enlisted, to the fact that he doesn’t miss an appointment with his therapist for anything short of a small apocalypse—he’s stopped Steve halfway through a suckjob so he won’t be late, and zipped up unfinished, and that’s fucking dedication—to things that are just coincidental but that Steve feels justified in attributing to Bucky just being that amazing because Steve is not biased one little bit at all, like how good he looks in the reading glasses he wears when his meds give him a migraine. It’s not as if said glasses _make_ Steve kiss him soft and slow to serve a full-180 from the swift and rough pace at which he jerks Bucky off, because when Bucky comes he relaxes head to toe and maybe it’s coincidence, or wishful thinking, but it seems to help just a little when Bucky’s skull is pounding. 

He’s stubborn, which clashes with Steve’s bone-deep orientation toward the same, but it also helps them understand, once they inevitably calm down, where the other’s coming from, why they’re so dug in to where they stand. It tests them, and when it’s not actually happening Steve can appreciate it for what it is, what it does: it makes them stronger. It proves to Steve, in small but _real_ ways, that what he’s feeling so strong and so fast is steeped in something real, that’s got a hold on his heart so tight it’d be lethal, like he’d bleed _out_ if it let go. 

Bucky’s a nerd, of a very high order, and upon learning that _Star Wars/Trek_ was still in his catch-up list—and that Steve did, in fact, want to form an opinion, versus just keeping it there out of a sense of obligation—he has thus far ushered the watching of at least one episode of _Star Trek_ a day, from the first series onward, in order, so that Steve is wholly versed in the history and the lore before he picks a favorite (and no matter what Steve offers him as incentive, he will _not_ tell Steve his own preference until they’re done). 

He’s an excellent life model, because Steve’s gone ahead and ran with getting back into sketching, and maybe not least because he has a fucking Adonis to stare at to get his skills back up to snuff. Steve had been pretty fucking mortified when he’d asked Bucky to grab his sketchbook and Bucky’d come across the one full of himself, over and over, during Steve’s unabashed pining prior to their first real date, but Bucky’s laughter, unbridled and joyful, had predictably done what it always did and made the whole world bright. Now, Bucky just usually apologized for getting a refill of a drink without warning when Steve was laying out the lines of his body on the page, or else did not apologize at all when he placed a firm hand at the top of the book, eyes bright and intent and Steve would go hot and know it was very much time to trace the shades of Bucky’s body in an infinitely better way because Bucky, he’s, he is. 

He’s— 

“No, that one’s not yours.” 

Steve blinks, doesn’t immediately clock that he’d been asleep, dozing again next to Bucky when he’d woken in the dark and decided he didn’t want to dress, or go for a run, or even set the coffee to start when he knew he’d forgotten the night before because the other option had been staying warm curled next to Bucky and that almost always won out; he likewise doesn’t realize he was reaching upward before he was fully awake; isn’t sure what woke him in the first place until he —and in truth, once he’s shaken enough of the haze of sleep to think on it, he wasn’t reaching for the coffee. He was reaching because he felt the settling of weight next to him in the bed and that always meant the same thing: reach, touch, hold, keep. 

It’s rote, already. 

He blinks again, and notices that the thing closest to his still-outstretched hand is a cup, steaming from the top, and Bucky’s fingers shining around the handle as he holds it out for him, his other hand wrapping around Steve’s calf from atop the blankets. 

“ _Double_ sugar, little bit of milk,” and before Steve can take the mug, Bucky pulls it away but only as a function of leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to Steve’s lips. “Calling bullshit, again, that you don’t have much of a sweet tooth.” 

Bucky does point that out—sweet reminder that it is, twice over, of that night at the bar—fairly frequently, in response to Steve’s tendency to eat most of any pastry that enters the kitchen, either from the bakery on the corner or their own oven, or the way Steve sucks Bucky’s skin slow and methodical like Bucky’s a goddamn treat because that’s precisely what he _is_ , or this: Steve’s now happily avowed desire for his coffee to be something more indulgent, more gentle and smooth with, yes, quite a bit of sugar. 

“I didn’t think I did,” Steve protests, even if it’s not a protest anymore, and when he takes the cup in hand it’s him pulling it out of the way to kiss Bucky’s lips, now, deeper than he got but no more or less perfect. “What was it you said? Just had to find it?” 

Steve draws back only when Bucky’s grin get a little wide for kissing and not losing himself in it—he’s got a hot drink in hand, after all—but Bucky’s eyes are closed and his cheeks flushed happily and Steve’s warm all over in a way that neither the coffee, nor the blanket, could ever hope to touch. 

“Something like that.” 

And Steve bends his knee to make a little nook for Bucky to sit inside, and Bucky is already leaning into it because he knows, he trusts what Steve’s body is sure to do, and maybe it’s not anywhere near too much, or too fast. Maybe it’s exactly what it should be, which is a feeling of peace alongside an unprecedented thrill, and the certainty that Steve’s never once, in any time or either life, known what it meant to be in the exact place he should be, doing exactly what he’s supposed to do, and feel like his soul is singing not just with it, but _for_ it. 

It’s only later, halfway through his coffee and Bucky’s warmth a given now against his leg, that he realizes what woke him—the scent of fresh-ground coffee. And the fact that the window across from him was opened, a soft breeze coming through, saturated with the scent of the rain. 

_Petrichor_. 

Steve’s chest clenches as he thinks back for the second time just that very morning, to that one night in that one jazz joint and every possibility Steve never thought he’d see comes to be, and he bites his tongue against the way words that are made of _too much_ and _too soon_ , and then _not enough_ and _so real_ flash through his brain unbidden—but it’s not the first time, is it, and hell: he could gnash teeth and draw blood as much as he wants. Wouldn’t matter. 

So the words linger, and the tightness in his chest doesn’t give way—but more than that, so much more than those words and whichever ones speak loudest and whichever ones thrum harder and bleed quicker or make that fucking blood sing even as it seeps—more than that? Steve likes it. 

Except no. 

Steve _loves_ it. And isn’t that just a couple steps away from— 

Well, shit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)


	10. an unassailable truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He’s a fucking riot, and a pain in my ass, and he wouldn’t take the arm unless I swore in blood that if it worked, everyone who needed it would have a shot at one. Said he wouldn’t touch the project if what he was doing was anything less than taking the risk to work out the kinks for a full program launch. Selfless fuck, sometimes. Makes my life more difficult. You’d think I’d have had enough practice at that by now, y’know?”
> 
> Tony raises a brow, and it’s only then that Steve breaks eye contact, looking down to his feet, weirdly bashful.
> 
> “But he’s a good man,” Tony—again, uncharacteristically—saves him from an awkward silence, and does it with an unassailable truth at that. “One of the best I know, short a time as I’ve known him.” 
> 
> And it surprises Steve, shocks his gaze straight back to Tony’s, when Tony grips his shoulder hard and smiles, just barely, squeezing before he lets go and turns, tossing back as he strides down toward the hall that holds Bucky, Bucky, Bucky—
> 
> “You almost deserve him, Cap.”

It’s a typical enough morning: Steve was up first, just getting back in from his run, which means he’s horny as hell—Steve’ll sleep in when he’s been run _ragged_ enough already by Bucky’s thighs, but today he was up before dawn and pounding pavement with the promise of pounding something much nicer when he gets home. Which does make Steve wonder how in the hell he managed to get up and run _every goddamn morning_ the past few years without proper incentive, but that strand of wondering leads Steve a little too close to dwelling on how mechanical, how pure-function based, how _sad_ he’d let his life become for too damn long, and frankly, Steve is absolutely _thrilled_ with his life as it presently stands, promising only to get better in the immediate future—he can hear the coffee brewing, which means Bucky’s in his boxer-briefs and nothing else, standing at the counter, a buzz so much better than caffeine even before the serum, just waiting for him to drink in once Steve’s shucked his shoes—and maybe not promising, but _hinting_ , when Steve’s feeling uncharacteristically optimistic, at _staying_ better in the long-term, too.

Steve’s ready to look his fill and then accost Bucky up against the cutlery drawer, right up until he realizes his view is obscured by—flowers.

Flowers made of...fruit?

“Never seen an edible arrangement before, I take it.”

Steve cranes his neck over the frankly-absurd tower of colorful...yeah. Fruit. But _why_.

“A what?”

“Melon and pineapple and shit made into little flowers,” Bucky says, hip cocked into the counter as he dramatically plucks what looks like a fucking Bird of Paradise make of god-knows-what and sucks it slowly between his lips in a way that’s goddamn sinful, so it’s a very poetic juxtaposition that’s pooling in Steve’s groin, sure.

“Mmm, pomelo,” Bucky comments, popping the consonant as he swallows, then shrugs with a grin. “ _Normal_ people send ones about one-tenth the size of this when they want to be fancy.”

There’s a card on the counter, but with this tidbit of information about _edible arrangements_ , Steve really doesn’t have to pick it up to answer his next question:

“So _this_ came from Tony.”

Bucky’s grin turns more to a smirk, but there’s something curled around the base of it that sits sour in Steve’s chest.

“He sends them when he’s come up with a new thing he wants to add to my arm.”

Ah. So that’s the sour thing.

“You’ve gone in for things before,” Steve notes, because yeah, Bucky’s been in and out of Tony’s lab in the time they’ve spent together, more than once. They go into the city together, usually, when that happens. Steve never craves the end of his workday like he does when he knows he can ask JARVIS to take him straight to Bucky and they’ll head home— _home_ —together. They’re both the longest and the most incredible days he spends on the job. 

“Did you eat _all_ of those,” Steve’s raises a brow; “ _bouquets_ , the other times?”

Bucky snorts, grabbing another blossom that looks to be mostly exquisitely-shaped watermelon and sliding it off of the stick holding it together only to chance a look at Steve for agreement before lobbing it in a perfect arc for Steve to catch in his mouth.

It’s delicious watermelon. The flush it gives to Bucky’s cheeks to watch Steve savor it’s even more delicious—because of course it is.

Bucky watches him for a long moment, though—the flush soft and persistent but his eyes go from dilated to close-on a little too big to match the almost subdued feeling in them. 

“I only get produce when he wants to put me under.”

Steve’s blood stutters, and goes a little cold because Bucky sighs with a kind of resigned quirk to his lips as he turns to the oven, adjusting the knobs and peeking through the window at whatever’s inside—something with eggs, given the shells sitting nearby, and Steve’s torn between worry for the slight tension in the line of Bucky’s spin, and the frisson of want that shoots through him, watching the curve of ass as he bends down.

Steve’s still trying to make sense of the conflicting emotions when Bucky straightens, and grabs another fruit-flower to sample.

“And he tries to be all billionaire about it, see?” Bucky takes a bite of half, leaving just enough to still cling to the wooden pick; leans toward Steve to tap the selection on Steve’s lower lip, begging entrance. “Lycee, and it’s fucking fresh.”

It is. Sweet and juicy, but Steve would rather taste something sweeter, so he leans in and nips Bucky’s lower lip, begs entrance of his own and is granted immediately because Steve’s a lucky bastard and this is his life.

“So, fruit salad for breakfast?” Steve asks, a little breathy as he leans his forehead to Bucky’s, as he feels the stiffness in Bucky’s body and tries to just hold still, to take as much of it into himself and off those shoulders as he can; Bucky hates going under. It scares him.

He does it anyway. And this time, maybe, Steve can help carry the least of the load, if nothing else.

“And lunch. And dinner,” Bucky murmurs, kisses the corner of Steve’s mouth, just a peck that feels like acknowledgement, like Bucky sees what Steve’s trying to do and accepts it. “And probably breakfast tomorrow.”

“Some of it’ll freeze probably, right?” Because if Bucky’s treating the giant produce-elephant in the room as an inconvenience, it's a tasty one, and not like a guillotine waiting to fall, Steve’ll follow his lead.

“The strawberries are always better to freeze,” Bucky answers idly, distracted as he starts to gather up the detritus of his cooking; the line of his back is straighter, harder now than before and Steve doesn’t know what to do, precisely, to help, so he stalls for time.

“Whatcha making?”

“Frittata.” 

Steve breathes in, and underneath the cloying fruit scent, the pepper and cheese heating in the oven smells delicious. 

He feels both inadequate, and grateful, when Bucky speaks again before Steve finds a way to fumble in support of whatever Bucky’s feeling, wherever Bucky’s mind is in response to Tony’s not-at-all-subtle announcement that he wants Bucky stretched out on an operating table.

“It’s gonna increase sensitivity in the receptors,” Bucky tells him, his tone kind of heartbreakingly stoic; blank. “Tony’s pretty sure he’s maxed out what can be done with the sensors themselves, for now at least, but Helen,” and something’s both eased and sharpened in Steve, when Bucky speaks of Dr. Cho: that means he’s in incredible hands, but it also means this is more serious than anything Steve’s been here for yet. 

“She’s been working with Bruce, who seems like such a solid guy, y’know?” Steve nods, because it’s true, and because Bruce is: and the two of them. Amazing. Bucky is truly in the _best hands_ , and yet— 

“But they’ve been thinking that the neuro relay side of things can give me feeling that’s indistinguishable from the right side.”

Steve frowns, jarred from his anxiety.

“Is it that different now?” Steve didn’t think that Bucky’s left hand was _exactly_ the same as his right, he’s not a moron, but Bucky doesn’t treat them differently. Bucky’s touch, the pressure and the deftness: Steve’s pretty intimately familiar with it and it’s never even crossed his mind that—apart from the slightest different in temperature and the most incredible variation in texture—Bucky’s experience of the world through one side or the other was so significantly separate.

“No,” Bucky says, and it shouldn’t soothe Steve to hear it, because it’s not _Steve’s_ goddamn body, but it does: it soothes him because he wants to believe that he’d have noticed. He wants to _be sure_ , down to his bones, that he knows Bucky well enough, even now already; and that Bucky trusts him. That Bucky _gives_ , and would let him know. Let him see. 

“But I’m used to it, y’know?” Bucky stretches his fingers out from his left wrist, watching them consideringly. “People coming in with a fresh loss, having it brought back when they haven’t already started to forget how it used to feel,” he makes a fist and then meets Steve’s eyes, gaze a little clearer and a little stronger as he smiles, just a touch.

“It’ll be good, if it can be as close as possible.”

God, but Bucky’s a fucking marvel. A _miracle_.

Steve’s throat is tight when Bucky quirks a brow and reaches, grabs Steve’s hip and pulls him in flush, quicker than Steve could stop even if he’d wanted, and closer than Steve can hide the hardening of his cock against Bucky’s own when Bucky’s mouth latches to the side of Steve’s neck and he breathes, hot and wet:

“Plus,” and Steve shivers at the way Bucky’s lips purse against the space where his skin gives for the force of his pulse; at the way Bucky’s tongue slips out just so, fucking tease: “chance to feel more of _you_?”

He rocks into Steve, just the slightest bit, but it’s intoxicating because it’s Bucky and fuck, but Steve _moans_ because he’s a goner and he’s, he’s—

“Wouldn’t pass that up,” Bucky smirks into the line of Steve’s jaw, and sets to rocking his hips forward almost leisurely, dragging the blunts of his teeth across Steve’s morning stubble and Steve can’t keep it leisurely, can’t keep it soft and steady: his hips jerk forward with force, and need, and Bucky gasps for the pressure and Steve tilts his head and captures Bucky’s mouth straight on.

“Buck,” he breathes into the kiss, hungry as hell; “I want you.”

And Bucky gives, lets Steve devour him but only until Steve has to break the hold, gasp for air, and then Bucky pulls back, but his eyes are dancing even before Steve whimpers a little at the loss, and the empty air he leans back into, intent on continuing his plunder.

“I know,” Bucky damn-near purrs, an open palm on Steve’s chest to placate and also still his unconscious advance because god, does he _want_ :

“But I’ll be damned if I let this burn.”

If Steve eats fruit-kabobs petulantly while Bucky finishes his frittata? Steve does not plan to make a single goddamn apology for it.

________________________________________

Tony wasn’t wasting any time, apparently, when it came to butter-up fruit bouquets, because the day of the procedure— _the_ procedure—comes within a week, and it has Steve’s heart tripping like it hasn’t done in close-on a century.

And in reality, when Steve tries to step back and remember what it felt like to not wake up in Bucky’s arms like it’s been a lifetime already, and Steve never wants anything less; in reality, they’ve known each other a handful of weeks, just a few months, and oh, fuck: but Steve’s so far gone he could be on another continent, another planet: but he wants to be here, _here_ on this planet, in this time, in this room, for the first time in so fucking _long_ —

He only wants to be right _here_.

“Breathe,” Bucky murmurs into the crook of his neck as he leans them against the wall of the elevator, sliding a flat palm up Steve’s chest. “S’gonna be fine,” he huffs, the breath on Steve’s skin a shiver counterpoint to the trembling of his pulse. “This is the _least_ of the shit I’ve gone through, here.” 

And Steve picks up on the distinction— _here_ ; knowing that Bucky’s terrified because he’ll be put under for the last part of the surgery, and still _knowing_ that the reason that’s scares him so deeply is because _elsewhere_ he’s suffered so much worse. So he can’t be blamed for wrapping both arms now around Bucky’s shoulders and drawing him in so close that Steve thinks he can feel the vibration of his own pulse through Bucky’s skin and still, he wishes he could hold him closer.

“Thank you.”

It takes Steve a second to register the words against his collarbone.

“Hmm?”

“For being here,” Bucky says, turning his head so his hair brushes Steve’s chin where Bucky’s head is burrowed against him. “Coming in with me.”

“Of course,” Steve presses his lips to the crown of Bucky’s head, a little bewildered. “Fuck, don’t _thank_ me,” he scoffs, but his arms hold Bucky so close the utter absurdity of the idea has to be tangible, at this point; the _notion_ —

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

Bucky snorts as the elevator pings. “Other than Stark Tower?”

“ _Avengers_ Tower!” Tony passes with the opening of the doors, timed just perfectly enough that he had to have goddamn planned it— or, in truth, that JARVIS planned it for him.

“Other than with _you_ ,” Steve nips Bucky’s lower lip before he shifts to devour his goddamn mouth, a little too desperate, save that he feels _made_ of what it means to be desperate, just now, and nothing could possibly convey it, ever.

Bucky’s pupils are very dilated when they break apart, chest heaving a little and mouth red, swollen up good, and that helps a little to cushion the way Bucky takes his hand, squeezes before he lifts Steve’s wrist, seeming on a whim, and kisses the inside, just between the pulse and the jut of bone and it’s so tender, so intimate that Steve doesn’t know what to do with himself, only really settles back into the reality of the now when Bucky lets go and smiles soft as he moves away.

“See you soon.” 

Helen’s waiting behind Bucky at a set of doors that Steve knows leads to the surgical suites on this floor; he hadn’t noticed her, but she waves at Steve and Steve manages the ghost of a smile that probably looks more like a grimace but at least he tries, and Helen doesn’t seem to mind; in fact, she grins at him and gives him a cheesy thumbs up, and the playfulness in it does ease something in Steve’s blood, if only just a little as they disappear through the doorway.

“He’s a good one.”

Goddamnit, but Tony Stark shouldn’t be able to appear at Steve’s side without Steve noticing. He _can’t_ , as a matter of fact, except that Steve’s never been like this, feeling like this, mind entirely elsewhere and attention anywhere but on his own self, his own person, save for how he _is_ entwined, so fucking deeply, with the subject of his every thought, the trajectory of his every breath—

God, he’s so fucked. He’s _fucked_ , and it’s so big. It’s so big, and it’s only just begun.

“Excuse me?” He’s really glad he finds it in himself to turn, and to ask, because Tony wouldn’t let him live it down if he hadn’t. He’s pretty sure his voice is pitched strange, a little pitchy and broken, but Tony doesn’t comment, and so either Steve manages to sound put together, or Tony’s being oddly forgiving.

“Barnes.” Tony nods toward the just-barely swinging doors Bucky’d walked through, as if Steve needs clarity on the matter.

“Are you,” Steve pauses, forces himself to gather his wits.

“Are _you_ trying to give me relationship advice?”

“Oh, so it _is_ a relationship?” Tony asks, a weird combination of skeptical, and judgey, and giddy. “Good, I was afraid maybe it was just a fuck buddies sorta thing.”

“Fuck buddies?” Steve raises both brows at that.

“It’s not?” Tony asks, this time his tone weighing heavier in the skeptical realm. “You’ve been holed up in your Brooklyn hovel, almost uninterrupted, for,” he ticks off a count on his fingers silently, wholly for show of course, because he’s a prick.

“Fuck, Cap, enough weeks that we can count by _months_ , now.” 

Yes, months. Months. The _best_ months Steve could ever dream up. 

“Considering you have a state of the art floor here that, once upon a time, you rarely left, I kinda figured you’d turned the hovel into a sex den.”

Steve takes a little tiny bit of satisfaction over the fact that Natasha did, in fact, de-bug his home sufficiently, because Tony apparently doesn’t know that he’s not spent more nights than he can count on both hands in the past months in his _own_ apartment. Still: Steve does not appreciate his perfectly nice, recently renovated but not _too_ renovated, perfectly cozy Brooklyn apartment being called a _hovel_ just because it doesn’t cast a giant phallic shadow on the city—but then, he’s used to that. He’s not, however, entirely used to Tony making sex jokes that...actually hit the mark, even a little.

So he’s unprepared, and that means he blushes, and _that_ Tony notices, and is not forgiving enough to forgo fucking _crowing_ over.

“Oh,” Tony fucking _claps his goddamn hands_ as he draws the sound out. “Well. Both then, okay. Either way. You do you, and that shit.” He looks like a kid in a candy shop and Steve braces for the harassment to come.

“But you haven’t even brought him home to meet the family yet, Capsicle,” Tony laments, and Steve can’t help but roll his eyes.

“I met him in _your_ lab—”

“And I just worry, y’know,” Tony pouts theatrically. “Don’t want you giving him mixed messages if you’re really into him.”

“You know that having Nat playing matchmaker is already one person too many, right?” Steve grouses, crossing his arms and trying to tune out Tony’s subsequent laughter and quipping until the sounds of both fade, quicker than he’d have predicted. Much quicker.

He turns, hoping to figure out _why_ that kind of unprecedented shutting-up occured, but Tony’s leaning against the wall, staring seemingly at nothing, looking...thoughtful.

Steve feels like he should be suspicious, at this point, but for some reason he can’t quite muster it. 

“It wasn’t Rhodey.”

Steve frowns, because _that’s_ a real non-sequitur; enough of one, in fact, that Steve’s distracted for even just a moment from thinking about Bucky, about fucking Bucky stupid, about forgetting words when Bucky’s rocking into him, about how Bucky’s hand feels in his and how he doesn’t think there’s any possible mixed message that can be sent in what the contact of their skin _does_ ; about fretting over Bucky, being prepped down the hall somewhere Steve can’t see—

“What?” Steve asks, because Tony’s apparently not going to expand on that of his own accord.

“Well, okay, it was, but not _just_ Rhodey.”

Steve still doesn’t understand and his face must show as much, given the force of Tony’s eyeroll.

“That made him the candidate for the robo-arm pilot.” 

Steve, at any other time, might have been offended by just how _dumb_ Tony’s tone makes it clear Steve apparently _is_ , in Tony’s present estimation. Not that that’s a particularly new thing, for Tony in interacting with Steve, but still. If they weren’t talking about _Bucky_ , and if Bucky weren’t about to have major surgery, then Steve would be more offended.

“He was a POW. Captured,” and Steve wishes Tony wouldn’t say those words out loud, and certainly not with such flat detachment when they gouge violent in his chest. “Tortured,” and Steve wants to protest, to ask him to stop because Steve’s heard it, yes, and he knows it, sure, but it’s only manageable when he can pair hearing it with the feeling, the proof of Bucky in his arms; “taken so the rest of his men could escape and then—”

Then Steve looks, his own mouth open to stop him, but he sees the look in Tony’s eyes and it shuts him right up because Tony’s not detached at all.

“Well,” Tony clears his throat, and blinks hard. “There was a,” he chews his lip, and Steve’s never seen him do that before, and isn’t entirely sure what it means, but he could guess.

“There was a, _familiarity_ there.”

Jesus. Steve hadn’t thought, but: yeah. 

“But he’s fucking strong,” Tony regroups and barrels on. “And brave, like the real kind of brave and not the posterboy bullshit, he’s the real deal, all that bullshit the flag stands for and whatever,” Tony shakes his head, and it says a lot that he doesn’t take a swipe at Steve’s star-spangled ass in the process, there; “but what they did to him? And they did a _fuckton_ , things I,” Tony takes a sharp breath, and breathes it out slow. “And hell, we don’t even know all of it, but honestly, he,” and he cuts off, and Steve’s on tenterhooks because it’s nothing he doesn’t know, either from Bucky’s stories or just _who Bucky is_ , but hearing it, like this? 

Hearing it like this reaches straight between Steve’s ribs and claws at his lungs; scores rusty nails across his beating heart.

“They didn’t break _him_ ,” Tony finally says, and he meets Steve’s eyes now, demanding in a way Steve’s never known from him before so that Steve couldn’t look away if he wanted to, if it was even a thought in his mind. 

“He’s a fucking riot, and a pain in my ass, and he wouldn’t take the arm unless I swore in blood that if it worked, everyone who needed it would have a shot at one. Said he wouldn’t touch the project if what he was doing was anything less than taking the risk to work out the kinks for a full program launch. Selfless fuck, sometimes. Makes my life more difficult. You’d think I’d have had enough practice at that by now, y’know?”

Tony raises a brow, and it’s only then that Steve breaks eye contact, looking down to his feet, weirdly bashful.

“But he’s a good man,” Tony—again, uncharacteristically—saves him from an awkward silence, and does it with an unassailable truth at that. “One of the best I know, short a time as I’ve known him.” 

And it surprises Steve, shocks his gaze straight back to Tony’s, when Tony grips his shoulder hard and smiles, just barely, squeezing before he lets go and turns, tossing back as he strides down toward the hall that holds Bucky, Bucky, Bucky—

“You almost deserve him, Cap.”

Steve’s breath catches, because he knew, but he didn’t _know_ , how much he’s never given a shit to deserving something before, much as he’d thought otherwise—didn’t deserve the serum, didn’t deserve the praise when so many lives were lost, when other men sacrificed more, worked harder—but this. _This_ , Steve thinks he might just give everything to deserve, even a little. That he could be good enough for this _one man_ ; enough to deserve him by halves, at best; to keep him: it’s both impossible, and essential.

“He’ll come out of this.”

Tony’s next to him again, the war in Steve’s head must have been wholly visible on his face and attributed to the wrong thing or else, one immediate instantiation of _all things_ that matter. 

“Worst is already over,” he assures Steve, voice confident more than cocky for once, but that doesn’t last as a smirk twists his mouth:

“So maybe think about doing something about the whole doe-eyes thing, yeah, when he wakes up? Those cartoon-hearts around your head are starting to get real fuckin’ obvious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)


	11. something wholly new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe Steve was pretty certain of this already. Maybe he just didn’t want—no. No, he wanted, he wanted _too much_ , really; maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe he’s still not ready. And he knows he doesn’t have words for it, but he’s never been good at words. Communication was always easier with his fists, and now, now he knows his hands don’t need to be clenched to get his point across—he can touch and press and hold and caress and words fail him, he thinks they’d fail him about what he’s feeling even if he were the poet fucking laureate because this is so big, this is so much. 
> 
> But he is absolutely certain: he’s in love with Bucky Barnes.

Five hours later, and Steve is absolutely certain about two things.

First: Helen Cho is a goddamn saint. That’s not new, and Steve was probably certain of it already, but he’s _absolutely_ certain of it, to an _uncanny_ degree, after Steve damn near pounces on her as soon as she emerges from the surgical wing—and maybe he should be embarrassed by the mess of anxiety that he is, in every way, or how he almost collapses against her when she reassures him that _everything went perfectly, textbook even_ ; maybe he should be, but he’s not. He’s also certain she’s a saint after he pesters her, against his own will almost, for the hours that follow, asking _one more time_ if it’s normal that Bucky hasn’t woken up yet only to be told—again, even though he knows, he _knows_ , because she’s _told him_ —that it’s entirely normal, and it’ll be normal if Bucky’s out anything from another hour to another five given the the particular anesthetic they had to use, which is good to know and should calm Steve’s pulse but is simultaneously so amorphous and imprecise that it makes his mind whir fast enough that, far too few minutes later, he’s tracking her down to ask. Again.

Saint Helen. Truly.

Second, though, and—maybe, maybe Steve was pretty certain of this already, too. Maybe he just didn’t want—no. No, he wanted, he wanted _too much_ , really; maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe he’s still not ready. And he knows he doesn’t have words for it, but he’s never been good at words. Communication was always easier with his fists, and now, now he knows his hands don’t need to be clenched to get his point across—he can touch and press and hold and caress and words fail him, he thinks they’d fail him about what he’s feeling even if he were the poet fucking laureate because this is so big, this is so much. 

But he is absolutely certain: he’s in love with Bucky Barnes. 

From the way his whole body vibrated, pulse high and heavy, caught between clavicles and rattling through his skeleton as hard as through his veins from the moment JARVIS informed him the procedure was underway, to the way he’s nearly collapsed on Bucky’s bed, tempted to rest his head on Bucky’s chest to hear and feel and _know_ the depth and breadth of his _life_ , for _sure_ : all of that culminating in the full gravity of Steve’s _fear_ only evident in the aftermath, in the residue it leaves and the crater of impact left behind as it mostly subsides—though _only_ mostly, while Bucky’s eyes are still closed. Because that lingering anxious shaking his heart had been doing for every half-skip it was willing to give, hard and violent like it was a crime against nature and the rules of the universe to _ask_ it to beat at all in the face of uncertainty like this. And that.

 _That_ is where the proof lives, if Steve needed it. He doesn’t, not truly, but if he did?

It’s in that.

Because Steve’s pondered— _maudlin_ , Peggy would say; _always so dramatic, Steve_—but he’s thought his share on all the people he’s outlived, all the others to come who he’ll leave behind. He’s touched more than once on the unfathomable, sinking-feeling possibility that there could be years, decades, _more_ to go where he’ll lose until that’s all he knows. It weighs upon him, it’s thick in his blood and makes everything in his body sluggish, his heart hurt for the effort of moving his own life, for the horrible promise of _too much life_ that won’t mean a goddamn thing if it goes on that long and he only ever ends up alone.

It’s horrible, but he accepts it and puts it away: not resolved, and not properly dealt with, he knows that. But he’s able to move around it and not disturb it every goddamn moment of the day.

 _Now_ , though.

Now, Steve’s afraid that it might be the only thing he’ll ever think about again, because this was routine, this was minimal risk, this was something Bucky’d been in for, or close enough to, countless times. This was as worry-free as it was probably possible to get.

But Steve? Steve is a mess, Steve is a puddle of untamed emotion and a pile of every what-if his overactive, overanxious mind could come up with. The vision behind Steve’s eyes flashed too many times to the unthinkable: Bucky, still and ashen and _gone_ and that’s….

That’s the proof. Because Steve can tiptoe around the idea that he might outlive the goddamn sun for all he knows; but he cannot, he _will_ not, he won’t survive even just the _idea_ , let alone the untenable possibility that he’ll live long enough to know a world without Bucky Barnes.

He doesn’t think he can stay standing against a potential world where he won’t wake up in those arms: warm.

He can’t step around and put aside something that swirls in and out of his ribs, endless. He can’t ignore, even for a second, the niggling, ever-present _maybe_ that whatever sins he’s committed, he’ll pay for them with a price he won’t survive, ironically survival itself. _Without_.

“Hey.” 

Bucky’s voice is gravelly, and Steve shoots up at the low rumble of it, eyes locking quick onto the bleary ones slowly coming to focus on him and Steve can breathe again, even as he cannot _breathe_.

Steve is so fucking blessed; Steve is so fucking screwed. 

“Y’didn’t have to stay.”

Steve scoffs, scooting his chair impossibly closer to Bucky’s bed. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Bucky smirks, a little snuffle of a snort escaping as he works further to shake off the sedatives. “Boring as fuck, I imagine.”

“Like I said,” Steve says, and notices—but doesn’t fight—the way his heart is audible in his voice, where it’s lodged in his throat. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

Bucky’s smirk blooms, full blown and blinding and Steve’s breath catches and oh. _Oh_.

“Fuckin’ sap,” Bucky rolls his eyes, lets them slip closed for a second and just breathes for a bit, and Steve watches, enraptured, until Bucky blinks and watches back, his gaze so fucking soft. 

“’M glad, though,” Bucky murmurs, and his eyes fall to where Steve’s hand is bunched in the sheets, and Steve’s not sure why he wasn’t already touching Bucky, grasping him, touching warm skin and smooth metal as both proof against all his worst fears in the past hours, manifestations of just how deep the things he doesn’t have words for run in his veins, but likewise: the promise of a future, living and breath, solid and real.

He’s not sure why they’re not already touching, until Bucky eyes Steve’s hand, and then flexes the fingers of his own on the left, almost testing, and Steve knows his body was waiting, where his own mind was already running, ready to leap: Bucky’s eyes are gentle, considering, and Steve imagines Bucky’s feeling whatever new textures, whatever details are different in the linens now with the impact of the new receptors, the wiring tweaks Steve doesn’t understand save that he can see...something. He can see something in Bucky’s face that’s wondering and tentative and overflowing, and that’s not quite close enough to make contact with Steve’s hand.

“Wanted,” Bucky whispers; clears his throat and starts again, stronger: “wanted you to be the first.”

And then he reaches, and he touches Steve’s hand, and his breath catches quietly, or maybe quiet only in comparison to the way Steve’s own gasp is loud because Steve’s skin is unchanged but his senses are somehow heightened even beyond a serum’s reach: Bucky’s touch trembles the slightest bit just before he grips Steve’s hand full on, wraps around his wrist and holds and if Bucky’s breathing is laboured, it’s not entirely audible over the tripping of Steve’s pulse in his ears, and Steve doesn’t register anything wholly outside the feeling of Bucky’s left hand, the gentle, deliberate circling of fingertips against his skin, until he’s jarred from his oasis of gentle, simple human contact, all heat and joy, by the sudden screech of a monitor looming above him, sending Steve’s thumping, overfull heart to racing, high-alert and scared, so fucking _scared_ —

But Bucky looks up, and squints at the screens before he flushes and chuckles, shaking his head as he ducks his chin.

“Look what you do to me, Rogers,” he says, nodding toward the no-longer-squealing but still blinking warning of the ECG, he realizes, which sends an ice he’s never known—for all the sorts he _has_ —through his veins until he watches and it’s quick, yes, but steady, and strong. The peaks of the ever-moving graph of the way Bucky’s life sparks through his veins are sharper than anything about Bucky should ever be, let alone that generous heart that Steve would give everything in the world to, for, alongside until the end of days and oh.

 _Look what you do to me._.

But it could be the fact that Bucky’s fingertip can pick up something wholly new, out of the clear blue; it could be the drugs, and a little bit of leftover giddiness. It could be—

Yet Bucky seems to recognize when Steve registers that much, down to the moment and he smiles, cheeks still pink: “Every goddamn time.”

Oh. 

_Oh_ , but if _Steve_ somehow does that, has that impact, means _something_ to or in or for that heart? Fucking hell, but he’s not sure he’s been more proud, or more moved by anything he’s ever done or been in his life than he is in this moment, with this man and his pounding heart starting to slow on display for Steve to see, all the while never once letting go of Steve’s hand.

“How long you gonna be in here?” Steve finds himself asking; he’s not wholly sure how he jumps straight to that, save for desperate need to ensure this lasts as long as possible, which may quite possibly be forever.

“Couple days,” Bucky shrugs, taking it in stride. “Tony optimized the procedure. Minimally invasive, given the givens. Impressive as fuck, even for him.”

“Good,” Steve nods even if he already knew it—was told by Dr. Cho and Tony himself, more than once; but he’s feeling the gentle warmth swimming in his chest start to spread and build throughout his whole body like a pledge, or a glimpse of what could be, what’s to come.

“May stay a little longer, if they say I need someone around to watch my invalided ass,” Bucky adds, and Steve’s eyes cut to him sharply because: the fuck.

“No you won’t,” Steve says simply, and realizes in that instance that people are right, when they accuse him of using his _Captain America_ voice, but in truth, there’s a voice he possesses that’s much more certain, much less open to argument or compromise, and that’s apparently the voice he uses when he’s head over fucking heels, and the person he loves is being an absolute moron. “You’re coming home with me.” 

Bucky turns, and blinks so owlishly that something tugs recklessly in Steve’s chest because _goddamn_ is he beautiful, and adorable, and doesn’t quite realize, apparently, that Steve’s entire world has started shaping itself around a space for him, carved in stone so as to never falter or shift away from a perfect fit. 

“What?” 

“You’ll come to my place,” Steve says, noticing that his hand is still in Bucky’s and it’s only when Bucky says nothing for too many moments that Steve’s tone shifts, and doubt is allowed the slightest of footholds. 

“Unless you don’t—” 

“I do,” Bucky’s quick, and his eyes are shining, now, almost glowing. “But I mean, are you _sure_?” 

And Steve could probably find words, if he had a lifetime—he hopes he does, fuck does he hope. But as a rule he’s not good with them, and he wants Bucky to know exactly how sure he is, right now, so he takes Bucky’s hand-still-in-his and leads it to Steve’s chest, and he’s not hooked up to any monitor but even the softest touch would tell Bucky the cadence of his heart, heavy and too-full and giddy and so fast, _so_ fast and Bucky blinks, eyes back to being wide as he meets Steve’s gaze and presses of his own accord closer to Steve’s bounding heartbeat and Steve knows he’s understood in that moment: loud and clear. 

Steve’s always spoken clearest in actions, anyway. 

“You do it to me too,” Steve murmurs, and rubs a thumbprint, metronomic, across Bucky’s knuckles, much slower than his pulse but just as honest and true. “I'm really fucking sure.” 

And really: that’s that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hitlikehammers/status/1357375574315069440?s=21) | [tumblr](https://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> -
> 
> Chapter Eleven art by [espressosaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espressosaur).


End file.
